]]>THUNDER BAY, Ont. – Ontario’s Liberals are promising to go ahead and spend $1 billion to build a transportation route to the Ring of Fire mineral deposit, with or without financial help from the federal Conservatives.

But they haven’t decided where or when they’ll start building it, or how they’ll find another $1 billion to complete the route in a remote region of northern Ontario if Ottawa won’t provide the funds.

They say those decisions will be up to a development corporation that they’ll create within 60 days of taking office that will include both levels of government, First Nations and private companies.

The Liberals are also promising to build more hospices, cap hospital parking fees and help high-school students plan their path to a desired career if they’re re-elected on June 12.

Officials say the platform essentially fleshes out more details of their failed May 1 budget that they’d planned to announce as they took the document on the road, and are fully costed.

It includes some common ground with their rivals, who triggered the election when they said they couldn’t support the budget.

The Liberals say they’d improve students’ math scores and physical activity, as well as increase apprenticeship spaces, which the Progressive Conservatives have also proposed.

They’re also promising to continue to reduce wait times, saying they’ve already cut them by 50 per cent, and are guaranteeing that every resident will have access to a primary care provider, such as doctor or nurse-practioners.

The New Democrats have also said they’ll reduce wait times and create more access to health-care services if they’re elected.

Premier Kathleen Wynne, some union leaders and NDP supporters have slammed New Democrat leader Andrea Horwath for refusing to support the budget, saying they could have supported many of the measures it contained.

Those included a hike in the minimum wage, billions to expand public transit and pay hikes for personal support workers and early childhood educators.

The Liberal budget also promised a provincial pension plan, a $2.5-billion fund for corporate grants and higher taxes for individuals earning more than $150,000.

The Liberals had planned to spend $12.5 billion more than they take in this year, up from $11.3 billion last year and the $10.1 billion projected in their 2013 budget. They said they still plan to slay the deficit in 2017-18, but won’t sacrifice the province’s public services to meet that deadline.

Spending was forecast to jump by $3.4 billion this year, $900 million more than projected in the 2013 budget, with program spending expected to climb by nearly $3 billion to $119.4 billion.

That’s going to help push up the province’s net debt by $20.1 billion to $289.3 billion this year, a staggering 40 per cent of gross domestic product.

Economists noted that Ontario’s current ratio of nearly 39 per cent is almost 50 per cent higher than it was six years ago, creating a “longer-term vulnerability” for the province.

Moody’s Investments Service said the planned increase in planned deficits for 2014-15 and 2015-16 compared to previous budget estimates “represents a credit negative for the province.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/among-ontario-liberals-promises-1-billion-for-ring-of-fire/feed/5Premier Wynne calls June 12 Ontario electionhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/premier-wynne-calls-june-12-ontario-election/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/premier-wynne-calls-june-12-ontario-election/#commentsFri, 02 May 2014 22:00:32 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=549407The NDP said Friday morning that it will vote against the budget

]]>TORONTO – Ontario was plunged into a five-week election campaign Friday after Premier Kathleen Wynne decided it was better to pull the plug than wait for her minority Liberals to be defeated in the legislature on their brand new budget.

She visited Lt.-Gov. David Onley to ask him to call a June 12 election after the NDP dropped the bombshell that they would join the Progressive Conservatives to shoot down the $130.4-billion spending plan.

Ripping a page from the playbook of her new nemesis Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Wynne painted the decade-old Liberal government as the safe, steady alternative to the “reckless schemes” of the opposition parties.

Voters shouldn’t consider veering to the political left or right, she warned, but stick to the balanced Liberal plan for job creation and economic growth that they proposed in Thursday’s budget.

Tory Leader Tim Hudak and NDP Leader Andrea Horwath decided to force an election rather than supporting a plan that would see Ontario through its fragile economic recovery, she said.

It would also improve people’s lives with a made-in-Ontario pension plan, billions for transit and transportation infrastructure and grants for businesses to create jobs, Wynne said.

“Quite frankly I thought there was a lot in the budget that would recommend itself to both the Tories and the NDP, but she made a different decision,” she said. “I think a lot is at risk.”

Although the NDP wrung concessions out of the Liberals in the last two budgets, Horwath said she could no longer prop up a government that was plagued by scandal after scandal and couldn’t trust the Liberals to keep all their budget promises.

“I cannot in good conscience support a government that people don’t trust anymore,” said Horwath. “This budget is not a solid plan for the future. It’s a mad dash to escape the scandals by promising the moon and the stars.”

The controversies kept piling up, from the costly cancellation of two gas plants to the police investigation into the Ornge air ambulance service and potentially unsafe girders that were installed in the Windsor parkway, said Horwath.

“It’s one scandal after another, it’s continued behaviour from a government that hasn’t seen the way to change their path, and so it wasn’t only the $1.1-billion (gas plants) scandal itself, but it’s the continuous cover up of information,” she said.

“The leopard is not changing its spots.”

Wynne put on a brave face when asked whether the scandals she’s inherited from her predecessor Dalton McGuinty would finally end the Liberals’ decade-long rule.

“I will continue to provide the openness that I have brought to this job since I came in just over a year ago,” she said.

The dissolution of the legislature scuttles highly anticipated appearances of senior staff in McGuinty’s office before a legislative committee looking into the gas plants scandal.

It also means there won’t be any finding of contempt against the Liberals for the deletion of emails and wiping of hard drives in the premier’s office because the committee is now disbanded.

The premier took several shots at Harper for failing to fund infrastructure to develop the Ring of Fire mineral deposit in northern Ontario, or help improve retirement income for people without a workplace pension plan.

But she reserved most of her vitriol for the NDP and the Tories.

“The NDP make pie-in-the-sky promises but they won’t say how they’ll pay for them,” Wynne said. “So now is not the time for pipe dreams.”

The Tories would “roll back the clock” in Ontario by “declaring war” on organized labour and slashing government programs people rely on, she added.

“Their cuts would devastate crucial public services in health and education,” she said. “Their cuts would take us along a path towards a low-wage, low-growth economy.”

Hudak said he has no qualms about taking his ideas to voters, which include lower corporate taxes and an across-the-board public sector wage freeze.

Horwath is hypocritical for taking so long to defeat the Liberals, which they should have done at least a year ago, he said in Ottawa.

“If you’re looking for who’s going to be the best actor on the stage, if you’re looking for someone who’s running a popularity contest by promising funding on all kinds of projects but they don’t have the cheques to cash in, well then vote for the Liberal leader or the NDP leader,” he said.

“But if you want a turnaround plan to get Ontario working again, look at me, look at my team, look at my plan.”

Several large labour groups, including the Unifor and the Ontario Federation of Labour, had urged the NDP to pass the budget and avoid an election, but public sector unions complained the fiscal plan puts jobs at risk.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union — which has been in a tough labour fight with the Liberals — said they support Horwath’s call to go to the polls.

Despite the left-leaning goodies in the budget like the pension plan, the Liberals can’t be trusted, said OPSEU president Warren “Smokey” Thomas.

There needs to be an election, even if it runs the risk of producing a right-wing Conservative government that “hates unions” and will tear down the province’s public services, he said.

Even though Wynne asked to have the legislature dissolved on Friday, and it won’t sit again until after the election, the campaign period doesn’t officially begin until next Wednesday.

]]>TORONTO – The stage has been set for a June election in Ontario after NDP Leader Andrea Horwath announced she has lost confidence in Premier Kathleen Wynne and the province’s minority Liberal government.

Horwath said she can’t continue to prop up a government that has been the focus of scandal after scandal and her party will vote against Thursday’s budget.

“I cannot in good conscience support a government that people don’t trust anymore,” she said Friday.

“This budget is not a solid plan for the future. It’s a mad dash to escape the scandals by promising the moon and the stars.”

The Liberals haven’t kept the promises they made to the NDP in last year’s budget, so she can’t trust them to keep the 70 new promises made in this year’s spending plan, Horwath said.

She said the scandals surrounding the costly cancellation of two gas plants, the Ornge air ambulance service and potentially unsafe girders that were installed on a parkway in Windsor proved too much for her caucus.

The Progressive Conservatives vowed to vote against the budget even before they saw it, and Horwath said the NDP will join them to defeat the fiscal plan on a confidence vote.

However, Wynne could decide not to wait for the budget votes — there will actually be two — and ask Lt.-Gov. David Onley to dissolve the legislature and call an election.

Wynne said she will make an announcement later this afternoon on whether the Liberals will drop the writ immediately, or whether they will force a vote on the budget in the legislature.

“I’m disappointed that (Horwath) wouldn’t have a meeting with me. I think there’s a lot in this budget that needs to be implemented in this province,” she told Belleville radio station CJBQ.

“But I’ve said all along … if we didn’t have a partner in the legislature, then we would take this budget to the people of the province, and we will do that.”

The New Democrats propped up the Liberals in the last two budgets, but negotiated major changes in each including a tax on incomes over $500,000 and a 15 per cent average cut in auto insurance premiums.

Several large labour groups, including the Unifor union and the Ontario Federation of Labour, urged the NDP to pass the budget and avoid an election, but public sector unions complained the fiscal plan puts jobs at risk.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union — which has been in a tough labour fight with the Liberals — said they support Horwath’s call to go to the polls.

Despite the left-leaning goodies in the budget, such as a proposed Ontario pension plan, the Liberals can’t be trusted, said OPSEU president Warren “Smokey” Thomas.

There needs to be an election, even if it runs the risk of producing a right-wing Progressive Conservative government that “hates unions” and will tear down the province’s public services, he said.

Thomas said he won’t tell his members how to vote, but he believes some will support the NDP while others will vote Liberals.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/ndp-says-it-will-vote-against-ontarios-budget/feed/8Wynne takes aim at rivals at Toronto Liberal conventionhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/wynne-takes-aim-at-rivals-at-toronto-liberal-convention/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/wynne-takes-aim-at-rivals-at-toronto-liberal-convention/#commentsSat, 22 Mar 2014 21:46:30 +0000http://www.macleans.ca/?p=528651If Harper can't lead the way, he should get out of the way, Premier Wynne told delegates at the party's AGM

]]>TORONTO – Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s antipathy to pension reform that would help middle-class Canadians is somewhere between “offensive and inexplicable,” Ontario’s premier said Saturday as she girds for a possible spring election.

“Now this statement may be true on a number of fronts, but on this one in particular: I’m impatient with Stephen Harper,” Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne said amid roaring cheers at the party’s annual general meeting in Toronto.

Harper’s “willful and ideological indifference to the retirement income crisis” is hitting Ontario and the rest of the country hard, she said.

“It’s somewhere between offensive and inexplicable to ask that people who’ve worked hard all their lives to be rewarded with a retirement that takes them out of the middle class,” Wynne said.

“That might be Stephen Harper’s way, but it’s not our way. It’s not the Liberal way.”

The Harper Conservatives are standing in the way of strengthening the Canada Pension Plan, she added. “So I say to Stephen Harper quite directly: If you won’t lead the way, then get out of the way.”

Several provinces, including Prince Edward Island and Manitoba, are banding together to explore options to enhance retirement income, saying they’re disappointed with the federal government’s unilateral decision to shut down discussions on enhancing CPP.

Many middle-income earners may not be saving enough to ensure a good standard of living in retirement, they say.

The Harper government didn’t directly respond to Wynne’s contention that some Canadians may face a retirement that takes them out of the middle class. It sent an email statement saying Wynne’s vision of pension reform would hurt business and shrink Canadians’ pay cheques.

Harper is a “very convenient scapegoat” for the Liberals, who’ve been embroiled in spending scandals and doubled the province’s debt since they took power in 2003, said the Ontario Progressive Conservatives.

Pensions aren’t free, said Tory critic Rod Jackson. “They come out of the taxpayer’s pocket and to trust this government to give them more so that they can save it for us is comical at best.”

While Wynne tried to take Harper down on pensions, she also ripped a page from his election playbook, painting the governing Liberals as the safe, steady alternative to the “reckless” Progressive Conservatives and inexperienced New Democrats.

She resurrected the ghosts of Tory past, saying she didn’t want a sequel to the “slasher film” from the 1990s starring former premier Mike Harris, whose Common Sense Revolution sparked massive protests and labour unrest.

It would also be a mistake to put the anti-business NDP in charge of Ontario’s fragile economic recovery, Wynne added.

The premier took a jab their commitment to their leftist roots, saying they didn’t have a coherent position on minimum wage — which the Liberals plan to raise — expanding public transit or pensions.

But Wynne didn’t mention Horwath by name, while Opposition Leader Tim Hudak had star billing in her speech.

The Tories said it’s a sign Wynne sees their party as a “true threat” to the Liberals. But her softer tone with the NDP may also be part of a Liberal campaign strategy to woo disgruntled New Democrats who feel the party has lost its way.

Wynne knows that NDP Leader Andrea Horwath is popular and voters like her, said New Democrat Gilles Bisson. They realize that attacking Horwath won’t help the Liberals.

Despite taking a more aggressive tone towards her rivals, Wynne said she’s still committed to a “positive and constructive” way of doing politics.

“I wasn’t actually name-calling,” she said following her speech.

“I know (the next election) will be a tough fight, but I will not attack people’s personalities. I will not attack individuals.”

The party test-drove new slogans over the weekend to sell the Wynne and the Liberal brand. Ontarians are in “safe hands” with the governing party. Wynne, who became premier just over a year ago but has plenty of cabinet experience, is “what leadership is.”

An election could be around the corner if the minority Liberals fail to pass their spring budget, whose date hasn’t been announced yet.

Convention delegates got a crash course in campaigning, with workshops on such tasks as fundraising, communications and rural campaign strategies.

Outside, dozens of protesters banged on pots and pans, calling on the Liberals to boost social assistant rates and further raise the minimum wage to $14 an hour.

Organizer Liisa Schofield said that Wynne’s actions don’t back up her rhetoric about helping the poor and disadvantaged.

“Premier Wynne talks a lot about social justice, presenting herself as the social justice premier. But all that we’ve seen is further cuts” to assistance programs, she said.

Protester Diane Meredith said Wynne should move to bolster spending on welfare and disability help.

“If she wants to get re-elected and she wants to really say she’s listening to the people of this province then she needs to address the losses and the things that are being cut, and have been cut consistently over the last 10 years.”

When Kathleen Wynne succeeded Dalton McGuinty as Ontario premier in February, she became Canada’s first gay premier. The Liberal also inherited a number of her predecessor’s troubles, from a massive debt load to troubled negotiations with the province’s teachers to the contentious decision to cancel two power plants that has since become a controversy over deleted emails. Wynne came to Ottawa last week to make the pitch for a national transit strategy and new investment in infrastructure.

Q: Let’s start with some of the news from this week: your predecessor testifying before the legislative committee investigating the gas-plant controversy. Were you satisfied with what he had to say? Do you feel like the issue has been put to rest at this point?

A: I was very pleased that the former premier agreed to come a second time and to clear up some of the issues around the information, the emails and so on. And I think he answered the questions straightforwardly and my hope is that the committee got what it needed.

Q: Can Ontario voters feel at this point that the government is forthright with them on these things? Can voters trust the government at this point?

A: Voters can trust me, the public can trust me, that I am doing everything in my power to get the information that’s being asked for. You know, it was a commitment that I made during the leadership and I knew when I was coming into this job that we were going to need to broaden the scope of the committee’s ability to ask questions about a whole range of issues. I’ve said that we made mistakes. We should not have located those gas plants in those places in the first place. There should have been a better process. We’re putting a better process in place. So my hope is that people will see that we are being straightforward and that they will have confidence in that.

Q: Have you ever had a feeling of, “What did I get myself into?” You came in with a number of outstanding controversies that you had to deal with, you’re now facing five by-elections, you’ve got a minority parliament—there are lots of reasons that this isn’t the ideal job. Have you ever thought, “Wow, this is even bigger than I imagined?”

A: No. I foreshadowed all of these things in my leadership. I talked about the issues that we were going to need to confront. I talked about rebuilding the trust with teachers and the education sector, I talked about the documentation on the gas plants, I talked about needing to get back to the legislature and to work with the opposition. And what I’m proud of is that we’ve hit those markers, that we’ve been able to do the things that we said we were going to do.

Q: The attackads are already running. The line seems to be that you don’t represent change—you and your predecessor are basically the same person.

A: He’s way taller.

Q: Yeah, you’re very different people. But how do you put your own stamp on this? I know it’s only been five months now, but how do you signal that this is a new administration, that this is a new government?

A: Well, I’ve been very clear about my pride in the work that I’ve done over the last 9½ years as part of Dalton’s government and very proud of the work he did. Having said that, I came in saying there were some things that needed to change, whether it was on the processes around siting energy infrastructure or whether it is the collaboration and the partnerships that I want to form across the province. My particular style, which is collaborative, which is leading from within a team, I think that’s what’s needed right now. Clearly the party felt the same thing, so I’m going to be spending the summer doing just that: talking to people around the province and tapping into their ideas.

Q: Do you need a big issue, though? Do you need something like transit? McGuinty obviously left with education as his hallmark—is that what transportation and infrastructure can be for you?

A: It is a focus, because it’s so necessary. But have I decided that because I need a political brand that infrastructure is going to be it? No. I believe that it’s a pressing issue right now that needs to be dealt with and is difficult to deal with. I’m not anxious about wading into a difficult conversation with people because I think that that’s what’s expected of leaders right now.

Q: Last night you referenced the revenue discussion for transit infrastructure in the general Toronto area. Is there anything specifically that you’re open to considering at this point? When we talk about revenue, are we talking about road tolls?

A:Metrolinx has put forward some recommendations, but what has to happen now in the next few months is we need to refine that discussion with people. We need to engage the public. It’s not just about transit. It’s about infrastructure in rural and northern municipalities as well and that’s roads and bridges and water systems. The infrastructure discussion is one that has not, in my opinion, had the attention that it needs over the last 30 years, so I’m determined to bring that to the people of Ontario.

Q: What about using revenue tools such as taxes to pay for the deficit and pay down the debt? Are you open to considering that at all?

A: Well, you know, we have a big job as the government of Ontario—we have a lot of services that need to be delivered. We’re on track to eliminate the deficit by 2017-18. We have strategies in place to do that. We’ve overachieved on those targets every year for the last few years, so we’re going to continue on that path.

Q: But even if you eliminate the deficit, you’re still left with that debt. And you’re proudly a progressive—you believe in the power of government to do good things. At what point does that debt limit the government’s ability to do things, and at what point do you have to think about what you’re going to do to get rid of it?

A: Well, you’re absolutely right. We need to get to the point where we’re in a position to be able to pay down the debt. We’re not in that position right now. It’s a huge burden. But we’re not willing to slash services in order to deal with that because I don’t think that that is in the best interests of either the economy or of individuals across the province. So I agree with you, and once we eliminate the deficit I have made a commitment to constrain spending to keep it at one per cent below the growth of the GDP, in order to be able to deal with the debt. But we’ve got to stay on this trajectory first.

Q: Not to belabour the point—you can restrain spending, but at some point do you need to raise taxes?

A: At this point, that’s not the discussion that we’re having. We need to focus on our strengths and address the gaps. And infrastructure is a huge gap.

Q: I don’t know if it’s just because there’s a woman in the premier’s office now, but I read a column recently basically all about your clothes. And before that, there was the issue of the dress code in your office. Are we going through some kind of adjustment period due to having a female premier?

A: You know, the social historians will have to pull all that apart. I remember standing beside Dalton one time, early on when I was a candidate, and I said to him, “You know, men are really lucky in that there’s a uniform. You got a tie and a suit and a shirt and you change ’em up, but there’s a uniform.” And he said to me, “I always thought women were lucky because you get to change it up.” It’s just different. I don’t mind talking about clothes, if that’s what people want to ask me about. It’s not what determines who I am. It’s part of who I am, but it’s not definitional.

Q: With the speech you gave at the convention, with this discussion about clothes, you’ve obviously steered right into personal territory. When you became premier, you were the first woman, the first gay premier—do you mind these sort of labels or do you want to move beyond it?

A: I don’t mind it as long as it doesn’t take away from the other discussion. If that’s all you wanted to talk to me about, then that would be a real concern. But we’ve talked about a whole lot of things this morning. And I respect that conversation. The fact is that human beings bring their whole selves to their jobs. I bring my whole self to this job and if people want to ask me about my whole self, that’s fine, but I’m in the job because I want people to have a job; I want this province to thrive.

Q: Do you feel any extra pressure because of it? Especially being the first gay premier?

A: Well, it’s interesting, I have nothing to compare it with. I’ve only ever been the premier as a lesbian and a woman. I don’t have any way of knowing what it’s like to be a man in this office, but that’s true of my whole life. I know that there are women in every corner of this province, because I’ve talked to them, who are proud to have a woman as a premier. There are men proud to have a woman as a premier. So if my being in this job frees people to think differently about this office, that’s fantastic. And again I’m happy to bring my whole self to these discussions.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/on-deleted-emails-rebuilding-trust-and-being-the-first-gay-premier-of-a-province/feed/169Sometimes too much democracy is a bad ideahttp://www.macleans.ca/general/sometimes-too-much-democracy-is-a-bad-idea/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/sometimes-too-much-democracy-is-a-bad-idea/#commentsThu, 31 Jan 2013 15:00:00 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=344648The problem with the notion that delegated conventions are less democratic

If the Ontario Liberal convention that just anointed Kathleen Wynne premier does end up being the last event of its kind to use delegates, we cannot say it failed to deliver drama. Most political parties have, in the name of democracy, switched to a one-member, one-vote (OMOV) system which gives no special standing to party insiders or elected legislators. The federal New Democrats used OMOV for the first time last March, abandoning their tradition of giving labour unions a specified minimum vote weight, and the federal Liberals have thrown their process so far open that voters in their current race do not even need to be full members.

This time the Ontario Liberals did things the old way, allowing for the possibility of last-minute appeals to the assembled voters, between-ballot deal-making, and suspense-filled physical migrations of defeated delegations. This process doesn’t always pay off, but the Ontario Liberal show delivered on all these promises. The first draft of history, as it now stands, says that Wynne decisively won a head-to-head oratorical showdown with rival Sandra Pupatello on the morning of the vote, convincing the party elite that Ontarians would prefer her warmer, less aggressive style.

There is an obvious problem with the idea that delegated conventions are less “democratic” than U.S.-style open primaries; namely, that we still use delegates to do the job of actually making laws for us. When it comes to choosing party leaders, we often talk of democracy as if it were an unalloyed positive good, more being better without limit or without even a diminishing of returns. But when it comes to the hard job of turning political principles into rules enforceable by violence, most of us recognize the desirability of moderating the popular will through a mediating body of expert (or at least dedicated) representatives. In making their leaderships more “democratic,” parties seem to be tacitly acknowledging that the task of deciding the leader’s identity is actually not important enough to reserve to an informed elite.

The fact is that democracy is not only a limited good, but adding more of it at one point in the political cycle can mean less of it somewhere else. This ought to be clear from Canadian history: when the authority of party leaders was given to conventions in the first place, it put the leader’s power on a footing independent of the consent of his elected caucus, and as a result our party leaders are much less accountable from week to week and month to month than their analogues in the U.K. This has led to the evolution, within our system, of presidential-style prime minister’s and premier’s offices full of very powerful unelected personnel. In effect, it has made our government more American in form without the checks and balances built into the American scheme at birth.

It is not hard to see how one-member, one-vote leadership races might lead to a decrease or an impairment of “democracy,” depending on how it is defined. Adopting OMOV is not so much an exercise in democratic-ness, per se, as it is a change in the standard to be met by the candidate; whereas in a delegated convention the job is to impress the permanent rank and file of the party, under OMOV it is simply to sell the most memberships. This, in turn, shifts power to operatives who are good at selling the most memberships. (And the issue of possible sabotage coordinated by opponents of the party’s interest is never really dealt with theoretically, except through hand-waving.)

In spite of frequent statements that the day of delegated conventions might now be past, there is nothing inevitable about it. The Nova Scotia Conservatives, for example, “turned back the clock” in 2006 after having held a one-member, one-vote telephone election in 1995. OMOV conventions are supposed to offer practical benefits beyond moral superiority by increasing the “involvement” of the public with the party. But the downside, as the Ontario Liberal party revealed by offering a counter-example, is that the convention itself becomes meaningless, providing no opportunity for an underdog candidate to seize the moment and transform the mood in the room. The mood in the room doesn’t much matter if the leader has already been picked.

There is probably no one optimum method of selecting a leader for a political party; it will depend in any case on a party’s traditions, its particular situation, and whether it has a non-negotiable ideological raison d’être. The Ontario Liberals may decide two years from now that it was a mistake to turn their decision into a highly emotional gladiator contest in an old arena. Or they may decide that such a contest actually made a better scale model for a provincial election than the equivalent of a radio call-in to win concert tickets. Either way, the notion of democracy as some holy quantum doesn’t have much to do with it.

]]>TORONTO – Premier-to-be Kathleen Wynne will be meeting with the Liberal caucus today as she gets down to work as the party’s new leader.

Outgoing Premier Dalton McGuinty, who plans to stay on as an MPP until the next election, is expected to sit out the meeting.

It may be an awkward get-together, since only 10 caucus members endorsed Wynne during the three-month leadership campaign.

Most threw their support behind runner-up Sandra Pupatello, who was leading the race until three other leadership candidates went to Wynne’s camp.

Wynne says she plans to talk to the opposition party leaders in an effort to make the minority government work and avoid an election.

She’s also promised to bring back the legislature on Feb. 19, which was prorogued in mid-October when McGuinty announced that he would step down.

The New Democrats and Progressive Conservatives have already laid out some of their demands.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says she wants a public inquiry into the politically motivated cancellation of two gas plants, while Tory Leader Tim Hudak says he wants Wynne to cut government spending immediately to deal with the province’s $12-billion deficit.

Both say they want to work with Wynne, but the NDP’s demand would likely be politically disastrous for the Liberals, and the Tories have already launched attack ads calling Wynne “another Liberal Ontario can’t afford.”

Wynne didn’t have much to say about it Monday, saying she was looking forward to taking to both leaders soon.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/incoming-premier-kathleen-wynne-meets-today-with-liberal-caucus/feed/1Ontario’s incoming premier vows to work with opposition, avoid electionshttp://www.macleans.ca/general/ontarios-incoming-premier-vows-to-work-with-opposition-avoid-elections-2/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/ontarios-incoming-premier-vows-to-work-with-opposition-avoid-elections-2/#commentsMon, 28 Jan 2013 10:40:10 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=343321TORONTO – Working with the opposition parties, repairing relations with teachers and dealing with the Liberal government’s past mistakes are some of the top priorities for the woman who will…

]]>TORONTO – Working with the opposition parties, repairing relations with teachers and dealing with the Liberal government’s past mistakes are some of the top priorities for the woman who will become Ontario’s first female premier.

Kathleen Wynne, 59, won the Liberal leadership Saturday, while thousands of union activists and teachers angry over having contracts imposed on them protested outside the party’s convention at the old Maple Leaf Gardens.

But while she wants to repair relations with teachers, who are angry at the Liberals for imposing contracts on them, the incoming premier made it clear she won’t cave to their demands, and wants them to return to supervising after-class clubs and sports.

“I’m not going to rip up those contracts, but I’ve also been very clear that we have to engage in a conversation about extracurriculars,” she told reporters Sunday.

Wynne, who will also be Canada’s first openly gay premier, said she hopes her historic victory will give a message of hope to young gay people, but added she’s not a gay activist and that’s not why she entered politics.

Wynne said she wants to try to keep the minority government alive by working with the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats rather than have a general election, and had a “very good” initial conversation with Opposition Leader Tim Hudak late Saturday night.

“Tim and I have always had a pretty collegial interaction with each other, I’m sure that will get more formal, but it was a good opening conversation and I’m going to take that at face value,” she said.

“I will sit down with him and hope that we can find a way to have a conversation on the things that we can agree on.”

The Tories said Wynne doesn’t seem concerned about Ontario’s huge deficit and jobs shortage, and warned she won’t be able to escape the problems that plagued the government since it was reduced to a minority in Oct. 2011.

“I think the past is not going to go away,” said PC critic Vic Fedelli.

“The auditor general will be bringing the gas plants scandal, the Mississauga portion of it, to the legislature very soon, and the criminal investigation into Ornge is being done by the OPP ,and that will come to the legislature.”

The New Democrats also warned Wynne would have to deal with the problems McGuinty left behind.

“They have a nine-year record that’s hard to run away from,” said NDP house leader Gilles Bisson.

“How is everything that people felt about the Liberal party different this morning than it was last night when Mr. McGuinty was still their premier?

Ontarians don’t want a general election, they want their politicians to work together on issues, said Wynne.

“The rancour and the viciousness of the legislature can’t continue. We absolutely have to continue to work out our disagreements,” she said.

“What I’m hoping is that, if we can build a relationship among the three party leaders and among the three caucuses, we’ll be able to have that debate without the poison of that real viciousness.”

Wynne, who will hold her first caucus meeting Tuesday, said she hasn’t had time to start talking to people about building her cabinet, nor arrange a time for the transition in power, but she will recall the prorogued legislature by Feb. 19.

She insisted the cash-strapped government, facing an $11.9-billion deficit, can balance its books and make sure no one falls through the cracks, and promised more help for the poor.

“They are both priorities, that’s the reality, and that’s what being a Liberal is about,” said Wynne.

“We have a social assistance system in this province that penalizes people, that does not support people getting into jobs and keeping them there, so I’m going to be looking for ways to do that because ultimately, it’s in the best interests of the economy.”

As for the problems left behind by McGuinty _ the politically motivated and expensive cancellation of gas plants, the spread of industrial wind turbines in rural areas, a police probe of the province’s Ornge air ambulance service — Wynne said she was ready to deal with them all.

But she wouldn’t admit they had hurt the Liberal brand.

“We are going to be very clear with the people of Ontario that we understand where there were mis-steps and where we need to go forward,” she said.

“That will, I think, build on the brand,” she said.

Wynne said she was looking forward to working with other premiers across the country.

The next meeting of Canada’s provincial and territorial leaders is going to look, and perhaps act differently than previous male-dominated meetings, added Wynne, who will be the sixth female premier in the meeting.

“(Quebec Premier) Pauline Marios has already reached out to me,” she said.

“I’m looking forward to talking with all of them, and I think the conversation at that table of premiers will be very interesting, and I look forward to chairing that meeting.”

The Council of the Federation, the annual meeting of premiers, will be held in Niagara-on-the-Lake July 24-26.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/ontarios-incoming-premier-vows-to-work-with-opposition-avoid-elections-2/feed/3Ontario’s incoming premier vows to work with opposition, avoid electionshttp://www.macleans.ca/general/ontarios-incoming-premier-vows-to-work-with-opposition-avoid-elections/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/ontarios-incoming-premier-vows-to-work-with-opposition-avoid-elections/#commentsSun, 27 Jan 2013 20:06:03 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=343093TORONTO – Working with the opposition parties, repairing relations with teachers and dealing with the Liberal government’s past mistakes are some of the top priorities for the woman who will…

]]>TORONTO – Working with the opposition parties, repairing relations with teachers and dealing with the Liberal government’s past mistakes are some of the top priorities for the woman who will become Ontario’s first female premier.

Kathleen Wynne, 59, won the Liberal leadership Saturday, while thousands of union activists and teachers angry over having contracts imposed on them protested outside the party’s convention at the old Maple Leaf Gardens.

But while she wants to repair relations with teachers, who are angry at the Liberals for imposing contracts on them, the incoming premier made it clear she won’t cave to their demands, and wants them to return to supervising after-class clubs and sports.

“I’m not going to rip up those contracts, but I’ve also been very clear that we have to engage in a conversation about extracurriculars,” she told reporters Sunday.

Wynne, who will also be Canada’s first openly gay premier, said she hopes her historic victory will give a message of hope to young gay people, but added she’s not a gay activist and that’s not why she entered politics.

Wynne said she wants to try to keep the minority government alive by working with the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats rather than have a general election, and had a “very good” initial conversation with Opposition Leader Tim Hudak late Saturday night.

“Tim and I have always had a pretty collegial interaction with each other, I’m sure that will get more formal, but it was a good opening conversation and I’m going to take that at face value,” she said.

“I will sit down with him and hope that we can find a way to have a conversation on the things that we can agree on.”

The Tories said Wynne doesn’t seem concerned about Ontario’s huge deficit and jobs shortage, and warned she won’t be able to escape the problems that plagued the government since it was reduced to a minority in Oct. 2011.

“I think the past is not going to go away,” said PC critic Vic Fedelli.

“The auditor general will be bringing the gas plants scandal, the Mississauga portion of it, to the legislature very soon, and the criminal investigation into Ornge is being done by the OPP ,and that will come to the legislature.”

The New Democrats also warned Wynne would have to deal with the problems McGuinty left behind.

“They have a nine year record that’s hard to run away from,” said NDP house leader Gilles Bisson.

“How is everything that people felt about the Liberal party different this morning than it was last night when Mr. McGuinty was still their premier?

Ontarians don’t want a general election, they want their politicians to work together on issues, said Wynne.

“The rancour and the viciousness of the legislature can’t continue. We absolutely have to continue to work out our disagreements,” she said.

“What I’m hoping is that, if we can build a relationship among the three party leaders and among the three caucuses, we’ll be able to have that debate without the poison of that real viciousness.”

Wynne, who will hold her first caucus meeting Tuesday, said she hasn’t had time to start talking to people about building her cabinet nor arrange a time for the transition in power, but she will recall the prorogued legislature by Feb. 19.

She insisted the cash-strapped government, facing an $11.9-billion deficit, can balance its books and make sure no one falls through the cracks, and promised more help for the poor.

“They are both priorities, that’s the reality, and that’s what being a Liberal is about,” said Wynne.

“We have a social assistance system in this province that penalizes people, that does not support people getting into jobs and keeping them there, so I’m going to be looking for ways to do that because ultimately, it’s in the best interests of the economy.”

As for the problems left behind by McGuinty _ the politically motivated and expensive cancellation of gas plants, the spread of industrial wind turbines in rural areas, a police probe of the province’s Ornge air ambulance service — Wynne said she was ready to deal with them all.

But she wouldn’t admit they had hurt the Liberal brand.

“We are going to be very clear with the people of Ontario that we understand where there were mis-steps and where we need to go forward,” she said.

“That will, I think, build on the brand,” she said.

Wynne said she was looking forward to working with other premiers across the country.

The next meeting of Canada’s provincial and territorial leaders is going to look, and perhaps act differently than previous male-dominated meetings, added Wynne, who will be the sixth female premier in the meeting.

“(Quebec Premier) Pauline Marios has already reached out to me,” she said.

“I’m looking forward to talking with all of them, and I think the conversation at that table of premiers will be very interesting, and I look forward to chairing that meeting.”

The Council of the Federation, the annual meeting of premiers, will be held in Niagara-on-the-Lake July 24-26.

“The province has changed, our party has changed. I do not believe that the people of Ontario… hold that prejudice in their hearts,” said Wynne, who is married to Jane Rownthwaite.

Wynne delegate Alex Wilkinson, 24, said it’s a significant milestone for the province and the country, which will have its sixth female premier when Wynne is sworn in.

“We can do it. You can be from Toronto, you can be a woman, you can be gay. You can do that and be premier at the same time.”

Wynne has vowed to recall the prorogued legislature by Feb. 19 and said she would immediately try to meet with the opposition party leaders in an effort to make the minority government work.

“We’re going to need all the ideas that came out of this campaign, we’re going to need to put them together,” she told the crowd.

“We’re going to need to weave together a platform because we’re going to have to have it ready at any moment to go into a campaign. But we’re also going to need all those ideas to continue to govern.”

Pupatello, a Windsor native who served as economic development minister before leaving the government in 2011, appealed to the party faithful to come together in her concession speech.

“Tonight we made history: our final ballot had two women on the ballot,” she said to deafening applause. “Two strong women on the ballot.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper congratulated Wynne on her win, and thanked Premier Dalton McGuinty — who embraced Wynne onstage — for his service as premier.

“I look forward to working with Ms. Wynne on addressing issues that matter to Ontarians, and in particular the creation of jobs and economic growth,” he said in a statement.

There were early signs that Wynne had momentum in the race, nearly tying Pupatello after the first ballot with just two votes between them.

Pupatello got a major boost from Harinder Takhar — widely seen as a stalking horse for the former MPP — and widened her lead after the second ballot.

But Wynne cleaned up as Eric Hoskins, Charles Sousa and finally third-place finisher Gerard Kennedy threw their support behind her, pushing her to the top.

Sousa’s support surprised some observers, who believed the former banker and immigration minister would head to Pupatello’s more right-leaning camp.

Sources say Mississauga’s 91-year-old mayor Hazel McCallion helped convince Sousa — who holds a seat in the city west of Toronto — to cross the floor to Wynne. But Sousa said it was really about getting the legislature back.

Some speculated that Pupatello’s desire to call a byelection to get a seat before bringing back the legislature may have turned the tide in Wynne’s favour.

But her no-nonsense, professorial style — almost identical to McGuinty’s — may have also been a factor.

McGuinty’s “never too high, never too low” mantra carried the Liberals through nine years of ups and downs, and Wynne may have tapped into a vein of Liberals who want to stick with the moderate, centrist style that’s allowed them to ward off the Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats.

Wynne insists she’s different from McGuinty and the right leader for the times.

But as she takes the reins of power, Wynne will also have to deal with the baggage McGuinty left behind.

He’s alienated a powerful ally the Liberals had courted for years — Ontario’s public school teachers — by forcing a pay freeze to reduce the province’s $12-billion deficit. Public sector unions, who protested by the thousands outside the convention hall, have vowed to use their organizational might to defeat the Liberals in the next election.

McGuinty also left behind a trail of controversies, from the political decisions to cancel two gas plants in Liberal ridings — at a cost to taxpayers of at least $230 million — to a criminal probe of the province’s Ornge air ambulance service.

Sam Hammond, head of the union representing public school elementary teachers, said he wants to meet with Wynne, who has “a fresh opportunity to work to resolve” the labour strife.

“The sooner we can meet with the premier, the sooner we can work together to try and bring peace and stability back to our schools,” he said in a statement.

Above is the speech that Kathleen Wynne gave in Toronto this morning on the way to becoming the next premier of Ontario—a rather remarkable political performance. Below are the words that will be remembered long after they were spoken.

I want to put something on the table: Is Ontario ready for a gay premier? You’ve heard that question. You’ve all heard that question, but let’s say what that actually means: Can a gay woman win? That’s what it means.

Not surprisingly, I have an answer to that question. When I ran in 2003, I was told that the people of North Toronto and the people of Thorncliffe Park weren’t ready for a gay woman. Well, apparently they were.

You know, there was a time, not that long ago, when most of us in this leadership race would not have been deemed suitable. We would have been deemed unsuitable. A Portugese-Canadian, an Indo-Canadian, an Italian-Canadian, female, gay, Catholic. Most of us could not have hoped to stand on this stage. But the province has changed. Our party has changed.

I do not believe that the people of Ontario judge their leaders on the basis of race, sexual orientation, colour or religion. I don’t believe they hold that prejudice in their hearts. They judge us on our merits, on our abilities, on our expertise, on our ideas. Because that is the way everyone deserves to be judged. That is how we want our children, our grandchildren, our nieces, our nephews to be judged. All of us want to be judged on those things.

So when it is time for me to take us into the next general election, I will do it on the basis of our merits. I will do it on the basis of our successes. I will take our record to the people of Ontario.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/kathleen-wynnes-moment/feed/47Wynne poised to become premier. Next up? Realityhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/wynne-poised-to-become-premier-next-up-reality/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/wynne-poised-to-become-premier-next-up-reality/#commentsSat, 26 Jan 2013 23:41:15 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=342860Kathleen Wynne is almost certain to become Ontario’s next premier. She will be the first woman to hold the position, as well as Canada’s first openly gay premier. With Gerard…

]]>Kathleen Wynne is almost certain to become Ontario’s next premier. She will be the first woman to hold the position, as well as Canada’s first openly gay premier. With Gerard Kennedy’s and Charles Sousa’s endorsements, the only question left at the Ontario Liberal convention is: will Wynne’s victory speech air before the hockey game, or during it?

Tonight, Wynne’s victory will be sweet.

Tomorrow she will have to let go of optimistic rhetoric and face reality.

The Liberals are polling in third place provincially. Just today, thousands of teachers and union representatives took to the streets in protest of Bill 115 (for which Wynne voted) and what they characterize as the undemocratic legacy left to Ontario’s Liberals by Dalton McGuinty. Tomorrow, Wynne will have to answer to that legacy. She may say her leadership ushers in a new beginning, but the unions are much less likely to take her at her word than the adoring crowds of large-L Liberals that have surrounded her on the campaign trail.

If one thing differentiated the campaigns of Kathleen Wynne and her main rival Sandra Pupatello, it is that Wynne was running one race: the race to become Premier. Pupatello was running in two: the race for Premier and the race for Leader of the Opposition. While some have found her combative rhetoric abrasive, especially in contrast to the overwhelming optimism exuded by her fellow candidate, the Pupatello approach had some long-term merit. The next premier will lead a minority government and a party that’s more despised by its small-l liberal base than ever before, there is a very good chance Wynne will be leading an opposition party before long.

Tonight though Wynne is poised to make history. Tonight she should bask in the lights, dance with her campaign team and savour the taste of victory because tomorrow, she could very well be eating crow.

Is Ontario ready for a gay premier?

Kathleen Wynne asked the question this morning. Ready or not, it seems likely she’s poised to become Ontario’s first female premier. Here’s how Twitter answered the question as the third round of voting got underway:

Former cabinet ministers Sandra Pupatello and Kathleen Wynne are the only two candidates left in the race to choose Ontario’s next Liberal leader and replacement for Premier Dalton McGuinty.

Wynne came in second on the second ballot at the leadership convention in Toronto with 750 votes, but has since gained the support of third-place finisher Gerard Kennedy and Charles Sousa, who was fourth, after both dropped out of the race.

While Sousa and Kennedy have both endorsed Wynne, Kennedy has however freed his supporters to vote as they wish on the third ballot.

If Wynne gets all those delegates, it would put her over the top with more than 50 per cent of the vote.

@Kathleen_Wynne says "Let’s put something on the table. Is Ontario ready for a gay Premier?" #OLPldr http://pic.twitter.com/KzDXYItRCBC’s The House

#Breaking Kennedy moves to Wynne camp. Looks like Ontario will have first female and openly gay premier.Amar Sodhi

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/is-ontario-ready-for-a-gay-premier/feed/12Ontario to make history with first female premierhttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/pupatello-widens-lead-in-bid-to-become-ontario-premier/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/pupatello-widens-lead-in-bid-to-become-ontario-premier/#commentsSat, 26 Jan 2013 22:15:51 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=342821TORONTO – Ontario will make history with its first female premier.
Former cabinet ministers Sandra Pupatello and Kathleen Wynne are the only two candidates left in the race to choose…

Former cabinet ministers Sandra Pupatello and Kathleen Wynne are the only two candidates left in the race to choose Ontario’s next Liberal leader and premier.

Wynne came in second on the second ballot at the leadership convention in Toronto with 750 votes, but has since gained the support of third-place finisher Gerard Kennedy and Charles Sousa, who was fourth, after both dropped out of the race.

While Sousa and Kennedy have both endorsed Wynne, Kennedy has freed his supporters to vote as they wish on the third ballot.

“Kathleen has earned everyone’s respect, not just today but over a period of time, and to me she’s closest to what my campaign represented, which is real hard questions for the party and hopefully some really good answers,” said Kennedy, who finished second in the 1996 leadership race.

“We can’t suffer any illusions, we need a leader that’s prepared to deal with the tough stuff as well as the good stuff. So I feel very comfortable with the decision and I’m happy for my folks that they feel good about it as well.”

If Wynne gets Kennedy’s and Sousa’s delegates in the third ballot, it will put her over the top with more than 50 per cent of the vote.

Pupatello, who did not run in the 2011 election and would need to win a byelection to get a seat in the legislature, came in first after the second ballot, receiving 817 votes.

But insiders at her camp admit it’s over and she’ll lose the race.

However, some are surprised with Sousa’s decision to support Wynne. He had been expected to go to Pupatello.

“What’s important is that we ensure that we renew our economy so we can afford social programs, health care, education and that we ensure that we balance our fiscal matters for the long term and I believe Kathleen has what it takes,” Sousa said.

Attorney General John Gerretsen, who lost a bid for the leadership in 1996, said Wynne is the best candidate to deal with issues crucial to Liberals, such as helping people living in poverty and climate change.

“I think Kathleen is the kind of person and comes at issues from the kind of perspective that will deal with those two issues as well as well as many of the social issues that we face,” said Gerretsen.

“Most of the delegates figure that Kathleen is the best person to take us forward. I’m absolutely convinced of it.”

Some speculated that Pupatello’s lack of a seat in the legislature may have swayed delegates in Wynne’s favour.

The two had been only two votes apart after the first round of voting, setting off some dramatic developments on the convention floor.

Eric Hoskins threw his support to Wynne after he came last and was automatically out of the race, then former government services minister Harinder Takhar dropped out and walked over to Pupatello’s camp.

A total of 2,126 delegates can vote in the leadership contest, which will continue until one candidate gets more than 50 per cent of the vote.

The leadership convention was called after Premier Dalton McGuinty’s surprise resignation announcement in October, when he also prorogued the legislature and said he wanted a new leader in place by the end of January.

Dozens of protesters, mainly teachers angry over having contracts imposed on them by the government, greeted the delegates as they arrived Saturday morning, but thousands more demonstrators marched to the convention site in the afternoon.

]]>TORONTO – Thousands of protesters jammed the streets outside the Ontario Liberal leadership convention Saturday afternoon as delegates voted for the party’s next leader and the province’s new premier.

Police officers stood behind a barricade and let delegates in and out of the former Maple Leaf Gardens in downtown Toronto while the crowd of public school teachers, other union members and community groups let loose an avalanche of noise punctuated by whistles and drums.

The bulk of the protesters were public elementary and secondary school teachers, who were joined by other public sector unions, as well as the Canadian Auto Workers and United Steel Workers, among other labour members and community groups.

The demonstration started two hours earlier in a nearby park, where protesters listened to labour leaders and activists condemn the Liberal government’s decision to impose contracts on public school teachers. Speakers decried the move as a violation of workers’ democratic rights, and also railed against budget cutbacks.

Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation president Ken Coran said the next Liberal leader — who will become the province’s new premier — must negotiate contracts with public elementary and secondary teachers.

He had one key message for the next premier when it comes to dealing with unions.

“The lesson is simple. Be fair. Be respectful. And be democratic.”

Protesters, many of whom arrived in a fleet of chartered buses, then began a brief march to the nearby convention site.

Some delegates smiled as they walked by the spirited wall of protesters. Others were met with loud boos.

One supporter of candidate Kathleen Wynne leaned over the barricade to hand an apple, coffee and bag of chips to an older protester.

Teacher Craig Breen said he had to show his opposition to the imposition of teachers’ contracts.

“People here provide a great service to kids, and the reaction of our government to our fine service is to trample on our rights,” he said.

Eric Hoskins was the last to speak Saturday morning and the first to leave the ballot. He immediately threw his support behind Wynne. (Nathan Denette, The Canadian Press)

Sandra Pupatello finished at the top of the first ballot, just two votes ahead of Wynne. (The Canadian Press)

Wynne was waiting with a hug for Hoskins. 'You know anything can happen,' she said, 'but this is a terrific signal.' (Frank Gunn, The Canadian Press)

Harinder Takhar endorsed Pupatello after the first ballot. 'I think what’s really important for us right now is to move the province forward, work together and eliminate the deficit,' he said of his decision. (Frank Gunn, The Canadian Press)

On the second ballot, Pupatello earned 817 votes while Wynne came second with 750. (Frank Gunn, The Canadian Press)

Other results from the second ballot: Kennedy: 285; Sousa: 203; Takhar: 18.

Pupatello cheers the second ballot results. (Nathan Denette, The Canadian Press)

Wynne ended up with the support of Hoskins, Sousa and Gerard Kennedy, who finished in third place. Kennedy told reporters that he

As voting got underway on the third ballot, Pupatello insiders acknowledged their candidate had lost. (Nathan Denette, The Canadian Press)

Third ballot: Wynne, 1,150; Pupatello, 866.

Wynne told delegates that Ontario is ready for a gay woman to be premier. 'The province has changed," she said. "Our party has changed.'

'Now we have the challenges ahead of us and we’re going to need all of us working together," Wynne said as she accepted victory. (The Canadian Press)

'This is about a very special man,' Gerard Kennedy said during his brief tribute. (Frank Gunn, The Canadian Press)

'The future is in good hands,' McGuinty told Liberals. 'Our party has never been stronger.' (Nathan Denette, The Canadian Press)

MPP Kathleen Wynne thanked McGuinty's wife and children for their sacrifices. (Frank Gunn, The Canadian Press)

McGuinty also thanked his wife during his farewell: 'You gave me the strength I needed by making our home a place where premiers and politics count for nothing, but where being a dad and a husband count for everything.' (Frank Gunn, The Canadian Press)

]]>With the first ballot out of the way, it’s on to second choices at the Ontario Liberal leadership convention in Toronto.

In speeches on Saturday morning, the would-be Liberal leaders wooed both committed supporters and those they hoped to attract after the first results.

Results of the first ballot were as follows:

Sandra Pupatello, 599

Kathleen Wynne, 597

Gerard Kennedy, 281

Harinder Takhar, 234

Charles Sousa, 222

Eric Hoskins, 150.

The candidates delivered speeches with great energy but with very little mention of any policy.

Themes of the day: “Optimism” and “Hope” — two things that only capital “L” leaders possess, at least according to these leadership hopefuls.

The party’s’ message: Look out, Hudak, you’re up against a party that believes in the future … whatever that involves. Group hug!

Harinder Takhar was up first and it was his job to rile up a tired crowd that appeared slow to adapt to convention mentality. (The mentality being that it’s normal to dance for candidates and “Woohooo!!!” when someone mentions “our values,” before even define what they are.) Takhar’s speech launched the two-hour discussion of hope and dreams and feelings that would define most speeches. He did hit specific notes on better jobs for immigrants. He also talked about bringing down the deficit … somehow.

Gerard Kennedy, a veteran of Liberal conventions both provincially and federally, touted optimism and Liberal values. He urged delegates to give as much thought to their second ballot as their first. If he is going to become premier, it will be based on second choices.

Wynne’s speech was energetic and light. She was introduced by delegates dancing to Pink’s “Raise your glass.” While political dancing is normally too embarrassing to consider, Team Wynne danced so hard and so fierce even the most committed Pupatellans couldn’t help but clap. Wynne was also light on policy and focused on optimism and the Liberal family. She was at her best when taking on the question of her “elect-ability.” While many have claimed a gay woman might not be able to win a general election, Wynne pointed out that 50 years ago, every candidate would have had baggage. It’s easy to imagine that a Catholic, an Indo-Canadian, an Portugese-Canadian or a woman can, potentially, take win Ontario’s highest office, so why not a lesbian? The Twitterati responded to her speech with a mix of “That’s so gutsy!” and “Who cares? Stop trading in on your sexuality!!”

Sousa touted the benefits of high-speed rail and investment into the Ring of Fire, but his speech was met with little enthusiasm — even from his own team.

Sandra Pupatello used her introductory video to remind delegates that politics isn’t pretty. So much so that sometimes the only person man enough for the job is a woman — a woman from Windsor. Greatest moment of the convention so far: The slow-motion shot of Pupatello walking through the mean streets of Windsor, wearing a furry coat with a long, glitzy necklace. The speech shifted between optimistic and tough, as Pupatello touted her time in Opposition and strongly stated that the province needs business, labour and government to work together if anyone expects anything to get done. But that video … that video was good enough to be a low-budget music video from 2003. Or an add for General Motors from 2009.

The candidate who would be first to drop off the ballot was the last to speak on Saturday morning.

Eric Hoskins arrived with just six per cent of the delegate support. His video drew on his humanitarian experience and general selflessness. His presentation focused on the importance of rural Ontario, where real families live with real values — unlike those who live in the city, in ridings like his own, St. Paul’s. Hoskins said his lack of delegates allowed him to speak from the heart, away from the “political machinery” of talking points. He then hit on all the familiar talking points, though that just might have been what was in his heart.

After first-ballot results were announced, Hoskins pledged his support for Wynne.

]]>TORONTO – Ontario Liberal leadership hopeful Sandra Pupatello has received a major boost after edging her chief rival by just two votes in first ballot voting to choose the party’s new leader and the province’s premier.

Former government services minister Harinder Takhar endorsed her candidacy ahead of a second round of voting, although his move came after the deadline to remove his name from the ballot.

The move came just moments after another former cabinet minister, Eric Hoskins, threw his support behind Kathleen Wynne, Pupatello’s closest rival for the leadership.

But Takhar says that was not the reason for his move to Pupatello.

“I think what’s really important for us right now is to move the province forward, work together and eliminate the deficit,” he said.

Pupatello, a former MPP who did not run in the last provincial election, was just two votes ahead of Wynne after the first ballot, receiving 599 votes to Wynne’s 597.

Takhar got 235 votes while Hoskins came in last with 150 and was automatically knocked out of the running.

Wynne said Hoskins’ decision to support her was a “terrific testament” to her team.

“We’ve got great momentum and we are very optimistic, you know anything can happen but this is a terrific signal and I’m thrilled,” she said.

“She’s the best leader for this party at this time and the best premier for this province at this time too,” Hoskins said.

A spokesman for Wynne’s campaign said her support “far exceeded expectations” and continues to grow.

Gerrard Kennedy, who lost the 1996 leadership race to McGuinty and also lost a 2006 bid for the federal Liberal leadership, was third after the first ballot with 281 votes.

Another former cabinet minister, Charles Sousa, was fifth with 222 votes.

A total of 2,126 delegates can vote in the leadership contest, which will continue until one candidate gets more than 50 per cent of the vote.

The last-place candidate is forced off each ballot, which political observers predict could go to three or four or even five ballots.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/virtual-tie-after-first-liberal-leadership-ballot/feed/1Ontario leadership convention told province ready for a gay woman premierhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/protesters-greet-ontario-liberals-at-convention-to-pick-mcguintys-successor/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/protesters-greet-ontario-liberals-at-convention-to-pick-mcguintys-successor/#commentsSat, 26 Jan 2013 15:40:03 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=342680TORONTO – The two frontrunners in the race to become the next Ontario Liberal leader and premier delivered lively final pitches to the 2,126 delegates for support at the leadership…

]]>TORONTO – The two frontrunners in the race to become the next Ontario Liberal leader and premier delivered lively final pitches to the 2,126 delegates for support at the leadership convention in Toronto.

Former cabinet minister Sandra Pupatello, who did not run in the 2011 provincial election and would need to win a byelection to get a seat in the legislature, insisted she was the one who could lead the Liberals to victory in the next election, while acknowledging no one wants a provincial vote right now.

“I know Ontarians don’t want an election but if we are forced into one, we will be ready and I am the candidate that can win that election,” she told cheering supporters.

Kathleen Wynne, who was in the cabinet of outgoing Premier Dalton McGuinty until she left to run for the leadership, told delegates the party has to face up to its mistakes and assure people they won’t happen again.

She also vowed to recall the legislature by Feb. 19 and said she would immediately try to meet with the opposition party leaders in an effort to make the minority government work.

Wynne said Ontario is ready for a gay woman as premier and won’t judge the candidates on race, sexual orientation, colour or religion.

“The province has changed, our party has changed. I do not believe that the people of Ontario… hold that prejudice in their hearts,” said Wynne, who is openly gay and married to a female partner.

In his final pitch to delegates today, Gerrard Kennedy, who lost the 1996 leadership race to McGuinty and also lost a 2006 bid for the federal Liberal leadership, said the party needs to regain the support of public sector workers angered by the province’s move to impose contracts on public school teachers.

Kennedy warned the Liberals would not only lose an election to the Progressive Conservatives today, they’d come third behind the New Democrats.

Dozens of protesters, mainly teachers angry over having contracts imposed on them by the government, greeted the delegates as they arrived, but thousands more demonstrators are expected by this afternoon.

Kennedy said public servants are the Liberals’ partners in delivering government and the two sides must work together to eliminate the $11.9 billion deficit.

Rival candidate Harinder Takhar, former government government services minister, emphasized his immigrant roots during his final speech, saying he had to cut his hair and stop wearing a turban to get a job in Ontario, a decision he said also meant losing a part of himself forever.

All six of the candidates have now finised speaking at the leadership convention in Toronto and everyone is waiting for the results of the first ballot, which were cast as the delegates registered at the convention Friday.

Second-ballot voting is expected to begin around 1 p.m. The last-place candidate will be forced off each ballot until one of them gets over 50 per cent.

Political observers predict the Liberals are looking at a three- or four- or even five-ballot convention, which means the race could go on until late Saturday, or early Sunday.

The leadership convention was called after McGuinty’s surprise resignation in October, when he also prorogued the parliament and said he wanted a new leader in place by the end of January.

Pupatello leads in committed first-ballot votes with 27.4 per cent, and says she has about one-quarter of the ex-officios on her side.

Wynne, who represents Toronto-Don Valley West, is a close second in delegate support at 25 per cent.

Kennedy is in third place at 14 per cent, followed closely by Takhar at 13.25 per cent.

Former labour minister Charles Sousa, pulled almost 11 per cent of first-ballot delegates, and former children’s services minister Eric Hoskins finished last in delegate support at 5.6 per cent.

In recent years, the Liberal government has been plagued with scandals, including the costly cancellation of two gas plants, a police probe at the province’s air ambulance service and a nasty labour battle with public school teachers.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/protesters-greet-ontario-liberals-at-convention-to-pick-mcguintys-successor/feed/0Two tributes to Dalton McGuintyhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/two-tributes-to-dalton-mcguinty/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/two-tributes-to-dalton-mcguinty/#commentsSat, 26 Jan 2013 11:32:02 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=342549If you were to believe Dalton McGuinty’s son — and most people do on this — the premier gave himself the nickname “Premier Dad.” On Friday night at Maple Leaf…

]]>If you were to believe Dalton McGuinty’s son — and most people do on this — the premier gave himself the nickname “Premier Dad.” On Friday night at Maple Leaf Gardens, the Liberal Party of Ontario celebrated “Dad” first and “Premier” second.

Inside the convention, the tribute began with an introduction by two of his children, who laughed about the family nights and golf games they shared with their dad, far away from Queen’s Park. Later there was a slideshow featuring photos of a young, shaggy-haired McGuinty teaching kids to water ski, followed by photos of the polished politician holding babies, and finally of the silver-templed premier gamely pouring coffee with a laughing Tim Hortons worker. When McGuinty finally faced his audience at the end of the night, he was the first person to mention legislative issues and only vaguely alluded to improvements in education, health care and the environment.

Outside, hundreds of teachers assembled for a tribute of their own. Chants of “What’s disgusting? Union Busting!” greeted Liberal delegates. The teachers are protesting Bill 115, a bill that severely limits teachers’ ability to strike, which was passed and then repealed by the Ontario Liberal Government. Teachers say they will protest all weekend so the next premier knows exactly what to expect. The bill has come to represent the souring relationship between teachers unions and the provincial government, a dispute that many believe prompted McGuinty’s surprise resignation in October.

Rob Millard, a teacher at West Humber Middle School, said he and his fellow teachers braved the cold to have “one last talk” with McGuinty. “All we want is a chance to negotiate with our employer, same as anyone else, and bill 115 took that away” he says. “So this is our tribute.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/two-tributes-to-dalton-mcguinty/feed/1Ontario Liberals will pick a new leader and premier today at Toronto conventionhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/ontario-liberals-will-pick-a-new-leader-and-premier-today-at-toronto-convention/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/ontario-liberals-will-pick-a-new-leader-and-premier-today-at-toronto-convention/#commentsSat, 26 Jan 2013 10:39:41 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=342643TORONTO – The race to replace Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty kicks into high gear today as provincial Liberals cast their ballots to pick a new leader.
Six candidates are vying…

]]>TORONTO – The race to replace Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty kicks into high gear today as provincial Liberals cast their ballots to pick a new leader.

Six candidates are vying for McGuinty’s job, with the two front-runners — Sandra Pupatello and Kathleen Wynne — heading into the leadership convention in a virtual tie.

About 1,800 delegates and another 400 so called “ex-officios” — party executives, current and former MPs and members of the provincial legislature — already cast their committed first ballots Friday, with the results expected early this afternoon.

Second-ballot voting will begin around 1 p.m. The last-place candidate will be forced off each ballot until one of them gets over 50 per cent.

Political observers predict the Liberals are looking at a three- or four- or even five-ballot convention, which means the race could go on until late Saturday, or early Sunday.

The leadership convention was called after McGuinty’s surprise resignation in October, when he also prorogued the parliament and said he wanted a new leader in place by the end of January.

There’s not a lot of policy differences between the candidates — all have said they’re prepared to work with the opposition parties to keep the minority government alive.

Wynne took an indirect shot at her closest rival Friday, saying Ontario could be heading for a general election if Pupatello — who wants to win a seat before recalling the parliament — became Liberal leader.

Wynne said prorogation has angered Ontarians, and she would be able to recall the legislature by Feb. 19 if she is chosen leader.

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan has offered to step aside to allow Pupatello to run in his riding. The former Windsor-West MPP, who did not seek re-election in 2011, believes she could win the byelection and recall the legislature by the end of March.

Pupatello leads in committed first-ballot votes with 27.4 per cent, and says she has about one-quarter of the ex-officios on her side.

Wynne, who represents Toronto-Don Valley West, is a close second in delegate support at 25 per cent.

Gerard Kennedy, who lost the 1996 leadership race to McGuinty and also lost a 2006 bid for the federal Liberal leadership, is in third place at 14 per cent, followed closely by Harinder Takhar, the former government services minister, at 13.25 per cent.

Also running are former labour minister Charles Sousa, who pulled almost 11 per cent of first-ballot delegates, and former children’s services minister Eric Hoskins, who finished last in delegate support at 5.6 per cent.

In recent years, the Liberal government has been plagued with scandals, including the costly cancellation of two gas plants, a police probe at the province’s air ambulance service and a nasty labour battle with public school teachers.

Thousands of union members from across the province have planned a massive protest Saturday outside the Liberal convention at Toronto’s old Maple Leaf Gardens.

The Ontario Federation of Labour said the protest will include students, environmentalists, Aboriginals and other groups angry at the government’s budget cuts and a controversial law used to impose contracts on public school teachers.

“The new premier will see the many faces of their opposition — from now and into the next election,” OFL President Sid Ryan said in a statement.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/ontario-liberals-will-pick-a-new-leader-and-premier-today-at-toronto-convention/feed/0Updated: Ontario’s Premier Dad says goodbye after nine years of unlikely successhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/ontarios-premier-dad-says-goodbye-after-nine-years-of-unlikely-success/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/ontarios-premier-dad-says-goodbye-after-nine-years-of-unlikely-success/#commentsSat, 26 Jan 2013 03:00:39 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=342556TORONTO – Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, currently Canada’s longest-serving premier, has said his final goodbyes as he steps down from the top job.
Surrounded by his large family, an emotional…

]]>TORONTO – Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, currently Canada’s longest-serving premier, has said his final goodbyes as he steps down from the top job.

Surrounded by his large family, an emotional McGuinty thanked the Ontario Liberals for sticking by him through the good and bad, the years in opposition to their third straight election victory in 2011 — a feat the party had not accomplished in more than a century.

Family was a common refrain in his speech, the final act in an hour-long, humorous tribute hosted by his daughter Carleen and son Dalton Jr., filled with home movies of the massive McGuinty clan over the years.

“You gave me the strength I needed by making our home a place where premiers and politics count for nothing, but where being a dad and a husband counted for everything,” McGuinty said.

Growing up in Ottawa as the eldest son in a large Catholic family, he helped his busy parents care for his nine younger siblings. He worked odd jobs through high school to help out, from hospital orderly to a counsellor at his father’s summer camp.

As premier, McGuinty would often draw from his childhood to impart a political lesson about the responsibilities of leadership.

He did so again Friday night, saying his desire to “to do good for others” was a result of the good things his parents did for him through hard work and sacrifice.

He jumped into politics 22 years ago after his father Dalton Sr., an English professor and provincial politician, died suddenly while shovelling snow.

“My only regret is that my dad never saw me enter public life,” McGuinty said.

Love for their children and families is what drives people to want to build a brighter future for the province, from better schools and health care, cleaner air, new jobs and a better trained workforce, he said.

It is “exacting, imperfect work,” McGuinty said.

“We can be proud we got the big things right while seeing with clear eyes there’s still much more to do.”

McGuinty delivered his swan song at the former Maple Leaf Gardens, the same spot where he managed an upset victory to become leader of the party despite finishing fourth in the first two ballots.

His uncanny ability to beat the odds became a common theme for the so-called “accidental premier” over the course of his career.

When he first arrived at the Ontario legislature in 1990, the awkward lawyer was a far cry from the polished politician he is today. It took seven gruelling years in opposition — and one election defeat — before McGuinty led the Liberals to victory in 2003.

Along the way, he honed a political style that saw the governing party through many of the obstacles they faced over the last nine years.

“Never too high, never too low” was McGuinty’s mantra, an extension of his straight-laced, father-knows-best image.

Time and time again, people told him that it couldn’t be done — that he couldn’t win a seat as a Liberal, that he couldn’t win the leadership, that he couldn’t win the election, he once remarked. Yet he managed to do all three.

But he surprised everyone in October, when he decided to step down amid a series of scandals that seemed insurmountable, even for him.

He’d alienated a powerful ally he’d courted for years — Ontario’s public school teachers — by forcing a pay freeze to reduce the province’s massive deficit. The unions declared war, vowing to withdraw their financial support and use their organizational might to defeat the self-described “education premier” in the next election.

They made good on their threat in a Sept. 6 byelection McGuinty orchestrated in an effort to win the one seat he needed to regain a majority government, putting boots on the ground in Kitchener-Waterloo to elect a New Democrat for the first time in the riding’s history.

Adding to his troubles was a rare contempt motion over the cancellation of two gas plants in Liberal ridings — at a cost to taxpayers of at least $230 million — and a criminal probe of the province’s Ornge air ambulance service.

By tendering his resignation and shutting down the legislature, the 57-year-old premier bought time for his party to elect a new leader, mend its relationship with the unions and wipe the slate clean on the contempt motion.

McGuinty has defended his record, pointing out that he’s leaving the province with better schools and health care, and an economy that’s starting to get back on its feet.

But what McGuinty called progress also carried a heavy price, as government spending more than doubled and the red ink began to flow.

He plans to stay on as the MPP for Ottawa-South until the next election, but said he hasn’t given much thought to what he might do next.

As for his legacy, McGuinty said he’ll leave it to others to decide, that he’s simply grateful for having the opportunity to serve his province.

Whether the embattled Liberals can beat the odds once again without their longtime leader is another chapter for the history books that has yet to be written.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/ontarios-premier-dad-says-goodbye-after-nine-years-of-unlikely-success/feed/3Wynne takes shot at front-runner Pupatello as Ontario Liberals pick new leaderhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/wynne-takes-shot-at-front-runner-pupatello-as-ontario-liberals-pick-new-leader/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/wynne-takes-shot-at-front-runner-pupatello-as-ontario-liberals-pick-new-leader/#commentsFri, 25 Jan 2013 21:16:10 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=342396TORONTO – One of the two front-runners in the Ontario Liberal leadership race took off the gloves Friday, as more than 2,000 delegates cast their ballots to pick a new…

]]>TORONTO – One of the two front-runners in the Ontario Liberal leadership race took off the gloves Friday, as more than 2,000 delegates cast their ballots to pick a new leader and the province’s next premier.

MPP Kathleen Wynne took a not-so-veiled shot at front-runner Sandra Pupatello, suggesting Ontario would be heading for a general election if Pupatello — who wants to win a seat before recalling the prorogued parliament — became Liberal leader.

“The fact is that I have a seat and we don’t have to go into a byelection, and we don’t have to think about going into a general election,” said Wynne.

Wynne has promised to recall the legislature by Feb. 19 if she becomes premier, something she said Pupatello would have trouble doing without a seat in the house.

“There is no byelection in my path,” Wynne said.

Pupatello was quick to respond, saying Ontarians won’t mind waiting.

“The day I launched my leadership campaign, I said that the moment I have a seat we will be in the house,” she told reporters.

“It’s not going to take us very long, and in fact, our house always opened towards the end of March and I hope that’s going to be the case.”

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan has offered to give up his seat if Pupatello wins the race.

The leadership convention was called in a rush after Premier Dalton McGuinty stunned the public and his own party when he announced his resignation October 15.

Wynne said people across the province are not happy with the situation.

“The antidote to prorogation is to get back Feb. 19, the date on the legislative calendar,” she said.

“I have heard in every corner of the province really that I’ve travelled people saying that they want us back in the legislature.”

Pupatello, the former Windsor-West MPP who did not seek re-election in 2011, was the leader in committed first-ballot votes heading into the convention with 27.4 per cent, and with about one-quarter of the ex-officios on her side.

Wynne, who represents Toronto-Don Valley West, is a close second in delegate support at 25 per cent.

There was a steady parade of delegates Friday, most of whom are committed to a specific candidate for the first ballot only, who cast their votes as they moved through the registration area at the former Maple Leaf Gardens, the site of McGuinty’s leadership victory in 1996.

Leadership contender Harinder Takhar was in early to register — refuting reports that he’s either been a stalking horse for Pupatello or that he’s made a deal with fellow candidate Gerard Kennedy.

“I’m not making any deals, I’m going for the top job,” Takhar said.

Kennedy also denied he was making a deal with Takhar, and said all of the six candidates had been meeting with each other prior to the convention.

“If some people are leaning in my direction, that’s obviously because of all the work we are doing towards that,” said Kennedy.

“But nobody has any assurances of how this is going to turn out, and that’s what makes it an interesting way of choosing a leader.”

Kennedy, who lost the 1996 leadership race to McGuinty and also lost a 2006 bid for the federal Liberal leadership, was in third place in delegate support at 14 per cent, followed closely by Takhar, the former government services minister, at 13.25 per cent.

Also running are former labour minister Charles Sousa, who pulled almost 11 per cent of first-ballot delegates, and former children’s services minister Eric Hoskins, who finished last in delegate support at 5.6 per cent.

“It’s still a wide open contest,” Sousa said Friday as he cast his ballot.

Interim federal Liberal Leader Bob Rae also registered Friday morning, but would not say who he’s supporting in the provincial contest.

“I’m not backing anybody (publicly),” Rae said in an interview.

“I’ve decided who I’m supporting on an individual basis but I don’t really feel it’s appropriate for me as interim leader to come in and say this is who I’m supporting.”

The convention floor itself, on a hockey rink two stories above the old ice surface in the historic Gardens, was closed most of Friday while the candidates rehearsed their presentations for their final half-hour pitch to delegates Saturday morning. The leadership convention was not scheduled to officially open until Friday evening when the party pays tribute to McGuinty.

Second-ballot voting is expected to begin around 1 p.m. Saturday, and only the last place candidate will be forced off each ballot until one of them gets over 50 per cent.

There were some protesters outside the convention site, but teachers angry over imposed contracts and the Ontario Federation of Labour planned a large demonstration Saturday afternoon.

About 1,800 selected delegates and another 400 so-called ex-officios — party executives, current and former members of the legislature, MPs and even defeated candidates — are eligible to vote for the new leader.

Many predict the Liberals are looking at a three- or four- or five-ballot convention, which means the race could go on until late Saturday, or even early Sunday.

In the past year, the minority Liberal government has been rocked by scandals, including the costly cancellation of two gas plants, a police probe at the province’s air ambulance service and a nasty fight with public school teachers.

The question many Ontarians will be asking Sunday morning is: Will the province be heading for an early general election, or will the new leader try to work with one of the opposition parties to keep the minority government alive.

“They’re going to be looking hard at the kind of (publicity) bump they get coming out of the convention,” said Bryan Evans of Ryerson University in Toronto.

“I’m sure they will (get one), but will it be sufficient to inspire confidence so they can win a general election? Only the (winner) and the people around them can be the judge of that.”

Henry Jacek, a professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, said the Liberals know they’re in third place in popular support right now and likely couldn’t even win another minority government, so they’re in no hurry for a general election.

“The party is saying we need somebody who’s going to carry us over the next two years,” he said.

“There are going to be a bunch of people saying we don’t want to turn the government over to somebody else right away.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/wynne-takes-shot-at-front-runner-pupatello-as-ontario-liberals-pick-new-leader/feed/0Who’s who in the Ontario Liberal Leadership racehttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/a-guide-to-the-ontario-liberal-leadership-race/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/a-guide-to-the-ontario-liberal-leadership-race/#commentsFri, 25 Jan 2013 19:11:08 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=342026What you need to know about the six candidates, and then some

After the surprise resignation of Dalton McGuinty in October, the Ontario Liberal Party is finally ready to elect a new leader. While there are currently six candidates vying to be Ontario’s next premier, the odds are it will come down to a two-way race between Toronto’s hyper-progressive Kathleen Wynne and Windsor spitfire Sandra Pupatello. The voting process, however, may render a few surprises. Instead of allowing all party members to vote, the next premier will be selected by 2, 200 chosen delegates and “ex-officios”—former and current Liberal MPPs and MPs. The same process was used in the federal Liberal leadership contest in 2006, which saw Stéphane Dion upset front-runners Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae after Dion received overwhelming support from delegates of defeated candidate Gerard Kennedy. While the process has been criticized for being both time-consuming and elitist, watch for it to inject a little drama into the weekend’s voting.

Candidate: Sandra Pupatello

Age: 50
Hometown: Windsor, Ontario
Percentage of Delegates (as of Jan. 21st, 2013): 27 per cent
Previous position: director of business and global markets PricewaterhouseCoopers (2011- pres), MPP for Windsor-Sandwich (1995-1999) Windsor West (1999-2011)
Portfolios: Minister of Community and Social Services (2003-2006), Minister of Education (April 2006-Sept 2006)
Minister of Economic Development and Trade (2006-2008, 2009-2011)
Minister of International Trade and Development (2008-2009)

Strengths:

Bilingual

The only candidate from outside the GTA (only two of 24 premiers in Ontario’s history have hailed from the province’s biggest city)

Strong economic credentials

Specific platforms on social assistance, developing the Ring of Fire mining deposit in Northern Ontario, and improving health care in that region

Untainted by McGuinty government scandals like anti-strike legislation, Bill 115, which targeted teachers, or the cancellation of gas plants in Oakville and Mississauga which could leave the province with a $1 billion bill.

Weaknesses:

Does not currently hold a seat in the Ontario legislature, has said she would hold over McGuinty’s unpopular prorogation until she could win a seat in a by-election.

Has few nice words for her fellow Liberal candidates. “There is no reason I’d be in this race but for this terrible year,” she told the Toronto Star, suggesting the better candidates who would normally have run to replace McGuinty, like Finance Minister Dwight Duncan, are too connected to the scandals to be considered. “When I stand back and look at the cast of candidates, even I would pick me.”

She’s rumoured to have left politics in 2011 because of a falling out with McGuinty’s inner circle.

Oversaw Transit City (a comprehensive public transportation plan for Toronto that was later cancelled by Rob Ford) as transportation minister.

Effective campaigner. In 2007, she pulled a surprise upset in her riding, Don Valley West, defeating John Tory, who was leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives at the time.

Has plans to give cities more autonomy over transportation, green projects

Is often described as “easy to like”

Weaknesses:

Thin economic credentials. Often answers questions about the economy in a social justice framework. When asked about the economy in January, she told the Ottawa Citizen that if someone is sitting in traffic for 45 minutes on their way to work, or if climate change affects a farmer’s apple crop “those are economic issues.”

Voted for Bill 115, although she later told reporters that she only supported it to maintain her seat in cabinet.

A proud Torontonian – not a good thing to be if you want to win a provincial election.

As Minister of Education, he increased teacher salaries by 10.5 per cent over four years and quelled any labour strife.

Bilingual

Weaknesses:

Already launched two failed leadership bids (for Ontario in 1996, where he lost to Dalton McGuinty, and for federal liberal leadership in 2006, where he lost on an early ballot and went on to support Dion)

Detailed plan to balance the budget by 2016, including a focus on small business and tax incentives for companies hiring new employees.

Detailed plan to address challenges faced by people with developmental disabilities

Weaknesses:

Highly criticized for entering the race just before the deadline, accused of running as a “stealth candidate” while he was still in cabinet.

In January, the Toronto Star reported that a factory run by Takhar did not follow provincial safety laws and has twice been reported for dangerous working conditions.

Candidate: Charles Sousa

Age: 54
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario
Registered Delegates: 11 per cent
Previous Positions: various positions with the Royal Bank of Canada, MPP for Mississauga South (2007-present)
Portfolios: Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (2011-2012), Minister of Labour (2010-2011)

Strengths:

He ran a well-organized campaign,

He’s the most right-of-centre candidate and has a history of working across party lines (campaigned for then, future PC leader John Tory when he ran for mayor in 2004)

Sound business credentials

Weaknesses:

Has less experience in provincial politics and a thinner portfolio than his opponents

He’s failed to distinguish himself on the campaign trail.

Candidate: Eric Hoskins

Age: 52
Hometown: Simcoe, Ontario
Percentage of Registered Delegates (as of Jan. 21st, 2013): six per cent
Previous positions: President and co-founder (with wife, Samantha Nutt) of War Child Canada. Physician and humanitarian, MPP St. Pauls (2009-pres.)
Portfolios: Minister of Citizenship and Immigration (2010-2011)
Minister of Children and Youth Services in October (2011-2012)

Strengths:

Academic and humanitarian credentials (highlights of which include a Rhodes scholarship and being inducted into the Order of Canada).

]]>TORONTO – Premier Dalton McGuinty, currently the longest-serving premier in Canada, will be saying goodbye today as he relinquishes Ontario’s top job after nine years.

After winning three elections — a feat unmatched by the provincial Liberals in more than a century— McGuinty is set to deliver his swan song following a grandiose tribute tonight at the former Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.

It’s the same building where McGuinty was selected as the party’s leader in 1996, after an all-night convention where the fourth-place candidate managed an upset victory.

His uncanny ability to beat the odds became a common theme for the so-called “accidental premier” over the course of his career.

When he first arrived at the Ontario legislature in 1990, the awkward lawyer was a far cry from the polished politician he is today. It took seven gruelling years in Opposition — and one election defeat — before McGuinty led the Liberals to victory in 2003.

Along the way, he honed a political style that saw the governing party through many of the obstacles they faced over the last nine years.

“Never too high, never too low” was McGuinty’s mantra, an extension of his straight-laced, father-knows-best image.

Time and time again, people told him that it couldn’t be done — that he couldn’t win a seat as a Liberal, that he couldn’t win the leadership, that he couldn’t win the election, he once remarked. Yet he managed to do all three.

But he surprised everyone in October, when he decided to step down amid a series of scandals that seemed insurmountable, even for him.

He’d alienated a powerful ally he’d courted for years — Ontario’s public school teachers — by forcing a pay freeze to reduce the province’s massive deficit. The unions declared war, vowing to withdraw their financial support and use their organizational might to defeat the self-described “education premier” in the next election.

They made good on their threat in a Sept. 6 byelection McGuinty orchestrated in an effort to win the one seat he needed to regain a majority government, putting boots on the ground in Kitchener-Waterloo to elect a New Democrat for the first time in the riding’s history.

Adding to his troubles was a rare contempt motion over the cancellation of two gas plants in Liberal ridings — at a cost to taxpayers of at least $230 million —and a criminal probe of the province’s Ornge air ambulance service.

By tendering his resignation and shutting down the legislature, the 57-year-old premier bought time for his party to elect a new leader, mend its relationship with the unions and wipe the slate clean on the contempt motion.

McGuinty has defended his record, pointing out that he’s leaving the province with better schools and health care, and an economy that’s starting to get back on its feet thanks to Liberal efforts to spur growth.

But what McGuinty called progress also carried a heavy price, as government spending more than doubled and the red ink began to flow.

The premier argued Ontario had to borrow money when the global recession hit in 2009, like many other governments, to save jobs and stoke the embers of economic growth.

His advice for his successor is to keep fighting the deficit. Oh, and “don’t screw it up.”

Growing up in Ottawa as the eldest son in a large Catholic family, McGuinty helped his busy parents care for his nine younger siblings. He worked odd jobs through high school to help out, from hospital orderly to a counsellor at his father’s summer camp.

As premier, McGuinty would often draw from his childhood to impart a political lesson about the responsibilities of leadership.

He studied science before turning to law. In 1980, he married his high-school sweetheart Terri, an elementary Catholic school teacher. Together, they had four children: Carleen, Dalton Jr., Liam and Connor.

McGuinty jumped into politics 22 years ago under tragic circumstances. His father Dalton Sr., an English professor and provincial politician, died suddenly while shovelling snow and his eldest son was recruited to succeed him in Ottawa South.

McGuinty often joked that he was selected because the election signs in the garage already had his name on them.

He won the seat, bucking a New Democrat tide that washed the Liberals out of office.

Despite his bland public persona, McGuinty managed to win the Liberal leadership after placing fourth in the first two ballots.

He spent the next seven years in political purgatory, failing to lead the Opposition Liberals to victory in the 1999 election with the Tories branding him as not ready for prime time.

But McGuinty rallied after some media grooming — by the same Chicago consulting firm that helped Barack Obama win the U.S. presidency — and rejigging of the party machinery.

In 2003, he beat the beleaguered Tories, who were dragged down by a series of scandals over the fatal shooting of an aboriginal protester, a deadly tainted water scandal and a massive blackout.

His credibility took a hit shortly after when he imposed a health-care premium of up to $900 per worker, despite signing a pledge during the campaign not to raise taxes. McGuinty insisted he had no choice because the Tories left a hidden $5.6 million deficit.

He did another flip-flop on taxes when Ontario was teetering on the brink of the global recession, combining the provincial sales tax with the federal goods and services tax after campaigning against the idea for years.

It showed that behind McGuinty’s paternal image was a shrewd politician who was prepared to make unpopular decisions if he thought it was the right thing to do.

He plans to stay on as the MPP for Ottawa-South until the next election, but said he hasn’t given much thought to what he might do next.

As for his legacy, McGuinty said he’ll leave it to others to decide, that he’s simply grateful for having the opportunity to serve his province.

Whether the embattled Liberals can beat the odds once again without their longtime leader is another chapter for the history books that has yet to be written.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/mcguinty-says-goodbye-after-nine-years-of-unlikely-success/feed/1Decades-old system makes it hard to predict who Ontario’s next premier will behttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/decades-old-system-makes-it-hard-to-predict-who-ontarios-next-premier-will-be/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/decades-old-system-makes-it-hard-to-predict-who-ontarios-next-premier-will-be/#commentsFri, 25 Jan 2013 02:55:53 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=341851Conventions are not about engaging the public, experts note

Ontario Liberal Party leadership candidate supporters hang banners at the site of the convention in Toronto. (Frank Gunn, The Canadian Press)

TORONTO – The antiquated system Ontario Liberals have chosen to pick a new leader at their party’s leadership convention this weekend may add some drama to an otherwise lacklustre race, political observers predict.

While most parties allow each member to cast a leadership ballot, the new Liberal leader, who automatically will be Ontario’s new premier, will be chosen by about 2,200 selected delegates, so-called ex-officios, former and current MPs and MPPs.

The Liberals say it was because of the short time frame they had after Premier Dalton McGuinty announced his surprise resignation Oct. 15, saying he wanted a new leader in place by the end of January.

“The thing about a delegated convention which makes it interesting…is it can take on a dynamic that right now nobody can predict,” said Bryan Evans, associate professor of politics at Ryerson University in Toronto.

The brief leadership campaign, which reaches the finish line on Saturday, lacked excitement and failed to engage the public, but political experts say leadership conventions are not about the public.

It’s only natural that the six candidates vying for McGuinty’s job devoted their time to signing up new Liberals and then wooing potential delegates to the convention, instead of engaging the general public, said Professor Henry Jacek of McMaster University in Hamilton.

“I don’t think the party is very much worried at this point about the public,” said Jacek.

“They just want to make sure they get the right person for the job, and from their point of view this is an internal decision.”

Sandra Pupatello has the most committed first-ballot support, followed closely by Kathleen Wynne, with Gerard Kennedy third and Harinder Takhar a surprisingly strong fourth. Charles Sousa trails behind followed by Eric Hoskins.

But those commitments are for the first ballot only, and after that is when the horse trading begins as potential leaders try to woo the delegates from other candidates to their camp.

Pupatello and Wynne have the best shots at emerging as the victor this weekend, said Jacek.

“I think the only other person who probably has a really good shot at it is somebody who’s classified as the compromise candidate, and I think that’s Charles Sousa,” he said.

“I don’t think the others can make it to the end.”

In addition to the support of 27 per cent of the more than 1,800 delegates selected by Liberal riding associations and campus clubs, Pupatello also boasts she has 100 of the 400 ex-officios in her camp.

But that still would not be enough to put her over the top on the first ballot, which means we can expect to see some dramatic deal making on the convention floor, said Evans.

“An awful lot of people will make their move (after the first ballot) because they’re going to want to be in the best position possible to be effective on the floor,” he said.

“There will be an element of old fashioned suspense around what will be the manoeuvring on the floor, who will go to whom, and in this convention I think that will be vitally important.”

To become party leader, a candidate needs to get more than 50 per cent of the vote.

“Assuming nobody has over 30 per cent on the first ballot — and I don’t think that’s going to happen — then I think the rest will say they’ll hang in there for at least one more ballot,” said Jacek.

Many predict the Liberals are looking at a three- or four- or five-ballot convention.

One of the key things delegates will be watching for Saturday is momentum — who’s showing growth between the first and second ballots and who fell short, said Jacek.

“People have expectations of how much Pupatello should get and how far ahead of Wynne she should be, and if people don’t see that on the first ballot that could be a real problem for her,” he said.

If Pupatello or Wynne win the race, the Liberals will be making history by electing Ontario’s first woman premier, and in the case of Wynne, the province’s first openly-gay premier.

“I think the issues of identity are secondary to are we electing somebody who can do the job and move Ontario forward in a difficult time,” said Evans.

]]>TORONTO – With two female candidates leading the race to replace Premier Dalton McGuinty, Ontario appears set to become Canada’s sixth province to be governed by a woman.

Political experts, however, warn that even if Sandra Pupatello or Kathleen Wynne win the Ontario Liberal leadership vote this weekend — which was prompted by McGuinty’s surprise resignation in October — the victory may be short-lived.

“Symbolically it’s important for a time — what could be a very short time — that we have gender parity among the premiers,” said Jane Arscott, co-author of the upcoming book, “Stalled: The Representation of Women in Canadian Governments.”

“It would be more significant if the position could be consolidated with an electoral win.”

Women are still under-represented in the country’s legislatures, ranging from 10.5 per cent in the Northwest Territories to 30 per cent in Ontario — with Quebec having the highest representation at nearly 33 per cent.

The wave of female premiers is “marvellous,” but Canada saw this trend in the early 1990s before it dropped off, said Arscott.

One example is Lyn McLeod, who was selected as leader of the Ontario Liberal party in 1992 but failed to win an election three years later.

In recent years, Ontario’s Liberal government has been plagued with scandals, including the costly cancellation of two gas plants, a police probe at its air ambulance service and a nasty fight with public school teachers.

That may be one of the reasons why the Liberals are looking for a fresh start, some analysts say.

There has been a habit among Canadian political parties to turn to a woman as their leader when they’re in trouble or “long in the tooth,” said Cristine de Clercy, a political science professor at Ontario’s Western University.

“Occasionally some members of parties want to repackage and re-present the party to the electorate, and so they try to do something new,” she said.

“That doesn’t mean all female premiers ever have been chosen just to repackage and rebrand a party. But certainly that’s an element in some of the new selections of new leaders and premiers.”

The Social Credit Party and the Liberals in British Columbia could be seen as examples, De Clercy said.

Rita Johnston became the first woman premier in Canada in 1991 when she took over British Columbia’s troubled Social Credit Party from Bill Vander Zalm, but lost an election just six months later.

The embattled federal Progressive Conservatives chose Kim Campbell as prime minister, but she didn’t survive the 1993 election that marked the worst defeat in the party’s history.

Alberta Premier Alison Redford, Quebec’s Pauline Marois and Newfoundland and Labrador’s Kathy Dunderdale have all cemented their positions in a general election. Members of the Nunavut legislature chose Eva Aariak as premier in 2008, currently one of three women in the 19-member house.

Christy Clark, who became B.C. premier in 2011, hasn’t yet faced a general election. Ontario’s new premier — to be chosen on Jan. 26 — will have to undergo the same test.

Regardless of the outcome, women activists say the surge of female premiers in recent years is an “extremely auspicious moment” — the result of decades of work by other trailblazers.

“That doesn’t mean it’s the end of the story — absolutely not,” said Nancy Peckford, executive director of Equal Voice, an organization promoting the election of more women.

“There’s so much more to do and so many women who want to make a contribution.”

Ontario NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says having women occupy positions of power shows other women what they can achieve.

“One of the best things about having women premiers elected around the country is that it shows, not only other women but other people in Canada, that women are as capable and are as able and are as willing to take up the mantle when it comes to political office,” she said.

“I’m pleased by that. I think it’s a positive step and I’m glad I’ve played a small role in that myself.”

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ontario-may-get-first-woman-premier/feed/1The legend of the delegated conventionhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/the-legend-of-the-delegated-convention/
http://www.macleans.ca/politics/the-legend-of-the-delegated-convention/#commentsWed, 23 Jan 2013 18:34:41 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=340910They're entertaining, but not quite as wild and crazy as you remember

]]>This weekend’s Ontario Liberal leader election and the upcoming Quebec Liberal leadership election could be the last of a dying breed—the wild, unpredictable delegated convention. Fantastic drama, questionable democracy: such conventions are crack to political junkies.

Any smart political junkie knows that delegated leadership conventions have some steadfast parameters. A former Ontario cabinet minister who is a really smart guy (really, he is) summarized them recently as follows:

In delegate-based leadership contests, frontrunners are typically doomed to lose — except where there is an heir apparent, such as Chretien succeeding Turner, or Martin succeeding Chretien (and I suppose, Ignatieff succeeding Dion). The same held true for leadership contests in the other major parties — at least until they got rid of the old-school delegate convention format and replaced it with something akin to trolling for Twitter followers.

Front runners are doomed, unless there is an heir apparent. Gotcha.

He then set out three specific rules:

For delegate conventions, like the one coming up on January 26th, there are three rules of thumb. One: the frontrunners become a target for the other candidates — if they don’t win on the first ballot, they tend to lose on the last ballot.

Win on the first ballot or lose on the last. I’m following.

Two: the candidate who offends the fewest and befriends the most wins the race. All the leadership candidates liked Dalton McGuinty in 1996, and most delegates did too. Nobody expected him to win. But he was the most inoffensive, and built a coalition that brought him victory. The same was true of Lyn McLeod in 1992, and of Stephane Dion in 2006.

And finally.

Three: mainstream media coverage of a leadership race is unreliable, unless you follow the media with Rule #1 in mind. The media focus primarily on the frontrunner or frontrunners. In 1996, that was Gerard Kennedy and Joe Cordiano. Neither won. In 2006: Ignatieff and Bob Rae. Both lost.

There’s a well known phenomenon known as recency bias which is roughly the tendency to think that trends and patterns we observe in the recent past will continue in the future. The 1992, 1996 and 2006 leadership races are (relatively) fresh in our minds. All of those were won by candidates who “came out of nowhere.” The frontrunner in those races met all the “rules” set out of above. Thus, all delegated leadership conventions must follow these same rules, right?

Not even close.

I found 35 delegated leadership races in Ontario or at the federal level since 1958 held by the Liberals, PCs and NDP at both levels. That does not include races where there was only one candidate on the ballot (ie. the 35 does not include Michael Ignatieff in 2008 or Robert Nixon in 1967). While the rules of how delegates are selected have varied wildly over the years, for the purposes of this piece, I’m far more interested in the dynamics once delegates get to the convention—who is leading after the first ballot and how things unfold from there.

Of the 35 races I looked at, the candidate who placed first on the first ballot won 28 of 35 times (80%). Full stop. There have only been seven instances in the last 55 years in Ontario or at the federal level where somebody other than the frontrunner on the first ballot won. In other words, it has happened but it is not common and is certainly not a “rule.”

The average first ballot vote for the leader was 45.28%. That includes candidates who won on the first ballot often with massive vote totals. If you only count races that went more than one ballot—which happened in 25 of 35 races—the average first ballot vote was 36.4%. So frontrunners have won even when they didn’t come particularly close to getting over the finish line on the first ballot.

Where do frontrunners want to be on the first ballot in order to be “safe?” There’s no steadfast vote level that you need to cross. Of first ballot leaders who won on subsequent ballots, the lowest percentage was Robert Stanfield in 1967 at 23.3%. Only two other times did first-ballot leaders who ultimately won fail to get at least 31.5% of the first ballot vote (NDP leader Audrey McLaughlin in 1989 at 26.9% and OLP leader Andy Thompson who got 28% on the first ballot in 1964).

Again: the vast majority of frontrunners on the first ballot at delegated conventions have gone on to win. It is much better to be in first than not. Most of the time, they had more than 31.5% of the vote on that first ballot, but sometimes they didn’t.

On to those famous upsets. The seven first-ballot leaders who did not win are:

Those seven averaged 29.6% of the vote on the first ballot with a pretty wide range of vote. So how did these seven “upsets” happen?
In four of the seven races, the eventual winner finished second on the first ballot.

1958 OLP:
Walter Harris 39%
John Wintermeyer 34%

1961 OPC:
Kelso Roberts 21%
John Robarts 20%

1983 PC:
Joe Clark 36.5%
Brian Mulroney 29.2%

1992 OLP:
Murray Elston 30%
Lyn McLeod 27%

In the four instances when a second-place first-ballot finisher won, they came back from 1, 3, 5 and 7.3 points behind. It’s hard to call any of these “out of nowhere upsets.” So we’re down to the three instances where there were true “out of nowhere” results. Most of us are quite familiar with those conventions and what happened and the purpose of this post is certainly not to dissect how those upsets unfolded. But a few quick facts:

Michael Ignatieff in 2006 blew the biggest lead of any frontrunner—nine points over Bob Rae (ie. every frontrunner who has led by 10 points or more on the first ballot, has won). Dalton McGuinty won from the furthest back (12 points behind the leader, he was also the only winner who was fourth on the first ballot). Joe Clark had the lowest first-ballot score (by a wide margin) of any eventual winner at 11.7%. And Dalton McGuinty and Stephane Dion are the only other winners to get less than 20% on the first ballot.

So to summarise: 28 of 35 delegated conventions were won by a candidate who finished first on the first ballot, 32 of 35 were won by the first- or second-place candidate and 32 of 35 times the winner had more than 20% of the vote.

Upsets can, of course, happen. Who knows how this weekend will play out. Just understand that “conventional wisdom” that delegated conventions are wild affairs where frontrunners are doomed unless they win right away is based on recent, short-term memory and not supported by history.

]]>TORONTO – The Ontario Liberal leadership race began in earnest Sunday with the first campaign launch, as former cabinet minister Glen Murray kicked off his bid to succeed Premier Dalton McGuinty.

“We are a great party of ideas, of action and certainly of achievement,” the former Ontario cabinet minister and Winnipeg mayor said during a news conference at Toronto’s famed Maple Leaf Gardens where he announced his candidacy.

“I have new ideas to renew our vision. Ideas that will work so we can continue to keep Ontario great. Ideas built on our success, on our achievement and my own experience and leadership.”

Murray, 55, made the announcement a day after stepping down as Ontario minister of training, colleges and universities — McGuinty has said any minister entering the race must first quit cabinet.

The Toronto-Centre MPP said his experience as a big-city mayor and at the Ontario legislature makes him confident that he can take the reins of the party, which has struggled since forming a minority government.

“This race is like no other,” Murray told a cheering crowd of supporters.

“The winner of this race will be the premier of a minority government with an opposition set to force an election. This race is about picking someone who has a clear agenda and a premier who is ready if forced to take the Liberals into election and win another mandate.”

McGuinty announced on Oct. 15 that he was leaving public office after nine years as premier and 16 years as party leader.

Murray said he is the perfect candidate to “reset” and renew the Liberals.

If chosen to lead the party, he promised a five-point platform centred on tax cuts for small businesses, up to $500 in tax rebates for middle-income families and a “no-money-down” tuition-fee program for college and post-secondary education.

Under his guidance, he said, students would not have to put down a deposit of thousands of dollars before starting their studies.

Murray maintained that these lofty promises could be accomplished through turning tax deductions into grants, and promoting more productivity in government. He said more details will come in the following days.

Yet when pressed about specifics, he could only say that it could be done despite the fact that the province continues to deal with a inflated $14.4 billion deficit.

“I will reconcile all of these numbers,” he said. “You will have more spreadsheets. As you know, I am not a person who is accused of being short on words or details. I will try to be a little more concise.”

Murray, who was the mayor of Winnipeg from 1998 to 2004, won a seat in the Ontario legislature in a 2010 byelection in Toronto.

“I’ve been a big-city mayor, I have successfully led a large government through similar challenges to the ones we face now,” he said, adding he did so by working with people “of all political stripes.”

He said he didn’t want to brand himself as a Toronto-centric candidate, and pointed to family roots in Sudbury and Alexandria, Ont.

“I am not looking to be the establishment candidate,” said Murray. “Most of my support is going to come from grassroots liberals across Ontario.”

Although Sunday’s announcement was planned to much hoopla, Murray told reporters that the lack of his Queen’s Park colleagues at the announcement was not an indication of the lack of support he has in cabinet.

Instead, he insisted he had not spoken to many of them yet about his intention to run.

Those in the room to support him included his mother, partner Rick, former Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie and Toronto mayoral candidate and former provincial Liberal cabinet minister George Smitherman.

But Smitherman, whose job was taken over my Murray when he stepped down to run against Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, said he came to support a friend, and not necessarily to provide a formal endorsement.

“Certainly, I think he has good energy. He’s a good presence in the race and I wanted to show support on that level,” said Smitherman, who brought his young son.

Meanwhile, Murray also dismissed suggestions that he was trying to steal thunder from his colleague, former Municipal Affairs Minister Kathleen Wynne, who was set to launch her campaign Monday.

Wynne, who is also an openly gay politician, resigned from cabinet last week.

“We were on track. This was our plan,” he said. “It wasn’t about being first. It was about being ready.”

The Ontario Liberal Party will elect their new leader at a convention at Maple Leaf Gardens on Jan. 25. Those interested in joining the race must submit their names to the party by Nov. 23.

The fee to enter is $50,000 and candidates can spend up to $500,000 on their campaign.

Other potential candidates said to be considering a bid include former cabinet ministers Sandra Pupatello and Gerard Kennedy, who lost to McGuinty by just 140 votes in 1996.

While other high-profile members in McGuinty’s caucus have already rejected the idea of replacing him.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/glen-murray-announces-bid-for-ontario-liberal-party-leadership/feed/1MPP Kathleen Wynne steps down from cabinet for leadership bidhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/mpp-kathleen-wynne-steps-down-from-cabinet-for-leadership-bid/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/mpp-kathleen-wynne-steps-down-from-cabinet-for-leadership-bid/#commentsFri, 02 Nov 2012 14:00:27 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=310730Ontario Liberal MPP Kathleen Wynne has stepped down from her cabinet position, paving the way for her run at leadership of the party after Premier Dalton McGuinty stepped down two…

]]>Ontario Liberal MPP Kathleen Wynne has stepped down from her cabinet position, paving the way for her run at leadership of the party after Premier Dalton McGuinty stepped down two weeks ago.

Wynne’s announcement that she will leave her post as minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing and minister of Aboriginal Affairs comes a day after the first reports that she is going to make a run for leadership.

McGuinty has said that any cabinet minister who want to run for leadership will have to leave their cabinet post.

CBC News reports that Wynne will officially make her announcement in Toronto on Monday at 5:30 p.m.

Party members will choose their new leader during a convention in Toronto on Jan. 25-27.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/mpp-kathleen-wynne-steps-down-from-cabinet-for-leadership-bid/feed/0Ontario Liberal leadership convention date set for late Januaryhttp://www.macleans.ca/general/ontario-liberal-leadership-convention-date-set-for-late-january/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/ontario-liberal-leadership-convention-date-set-for-late-january/#commentsSun, 21 Oct 2012 23:23:23 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=305581TORONTO – The Ontario Liberal party has set a date in late January to elect a new leader who will take the reins from outgoing Premier Dalton McGuinty and eventually…

]]>TORONTO – The Ontario Liberal party has set a date in late January to elect a new leader who will take the reins from outgoing Premier Dalton McGuinty and eventually recall the provincial legislature.

McGuinty, who shocked the public with his surprise resignation last Monday, has said his successor must decide when to bring back the legislature which he prorogued as he stepped down.

The opposition parties — who have been infuriated with the prorogation — were quick to argue that the date created too long a wait for a new legislative session.

The Progressive Conservatives and NDP continued to call on McGuinty to reverse his decision to pull the plug on political proceedings. They say Queen’s Park was prorogued so the government could avoid scrutiny over its decision to cancel two power stations.

NDP house leader Gilles Bisson said in a release that waiting until early next year to bring the legislature back is simply not in the best interests of Ontarians.

“People want MPPs back to work — this year not next. The McGuinty Liberals can’t shut down the Legislature until 2013,” Bisson said.

Tory MPP Lisa MacLeod said there’s no reason a Liberal leadership race couldn’t be held with the legislature sitting.

“It’s disgraceful that they want to hold the assembly hostage this long,” she said. “It’s very clear that we could still be having the house in session while they have their leadership (contest).”

Liberal leadership candidates face a deadline of 5 p.m. on Nov. 23 to submit their leadership forms. They’ll need at least 250 signatures from party members and must pay a $50,000 entrance fee, while campaign spending will be capped at $500,000.

One high profile potential leadership candidate bowed out of the contest Sunday.

Ontario Liberal party president Yasir Naqvi said it was a “very personal decision” not to run for the party leadership.

“As the father of five-month old Rafi, I had to think long and hard,” he said in a statement. “First and foremost, I am Rafi’s dad, and being a father is my most important new job.”

Speculation that Naqvi would run grew last week when he recused himself from a conference call on the leadership convention, but wouldn’t confirm whether he intended to run for leader.

Naqvi said he’ll continue to work for his constituents in Ottawa Centre and looks forward to helping run the leadership convention.

“Now is a pivotal time in our party, and it is important that we ensure the leadership race is transparent, fair and robust,” he said.

“I know many of my colleagues are considering entering the race, and I wish them all the best of luck in their deliberations.”

Ontario Housing Minister Kathleen Wynne and Health Minister Deb Matthews are considered to be likely contenders, along with Energy Minister Chris Bentley and Economic Development Minister Brad Duguid, among others. But all remain coy about whether they’ll throw their hat in the ring.

John Wilkinson, the former environment and revenue minister who lost his seat in last year’s election, has also been mentioned as a possible candidate, as have former ministers George Smitherman and Sandra Pupatello.

But he says it’s a huge commitment at his age — and for the rest of his professional career — to either be premier or rebuild the minority Liberals if they lose the next election.

McGuinty has told his ministers that they have to step down from cabinet if they want to run.

Observers predict the leadership convention is likely to be followed by a throne speech, budget and another prorogation to allow for a general election.

McGuinty said he prorogued the legislature to allow time for his embattled government to negotiate with unions and the Progressive Conservatives on a public-sector wage freeze.

But it also brings all legislative business to a standstill and kills planned committee hearings into cancelled power plants in Oakville and Mississauga and a rare contempt motion against Bentley.

The opposition parties have repeatedly accused McGuinty of proroguing to avoid more bad publicity over the decision to cancel the gas plants, especially after a second batch of 20,000 documents was released after the premier and his ministers had insisted all relevant records had been released in September.

The second batch — following 36,000 documents released Sept. 24 to comply with a Speaker’s order — came just three days before McGuinty announced that he’d step down as premier once a new leader was chosen.

The government said its decisions to cancel the power plants in Oakville and Mississauga will cost taxpayers $230 million, but the opposition parties say it’s triple that figure or even higher.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/ontario-liberal-leadership-convention-date-set-for-late-january/feed/0A centrist party that has lost its centrehttp://www.macleans.ca/general/a-centrist-party-that-has-lost-its-centre/
http://www.macleans.ca/general/a-centrist-party-that-has-lost-its-centre/#commentsFri, 19 Oct 2012 09:00:01 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=304273Paul Wells on Dalton McGuinty stepping down and the Liberal party's climb ahead

Dalton McGuinty remains such a gifted political performer that when Ontario’s premier announced his retirement from politics, throat catching, eyes misting, it was easy to forget the context.

The context is that two recent polls put his Ontario Liberal party in third place, about 15 points behind the opposition NDP and Conservatives. McGuinty’s energy minister, Chris Bentley, stands accused by opposition MPPs of being in contempt of the legislature over an apparent failure to disclose all of the reasoning behind the cancellation of two gas-fired energy plants. There was talk of adding McGuinty and the government house leader to the list of Liberals facing contempt motions.

McGuinty won three elections in a row, but with less of a pop every time. To say the least, he had no guarantee of winning the next. It is a familiar trajectory for Liberals in Canada these days. The question is whether it can be reversed.

Let us get the good news for Canada’s assorted Liberal parties out of the way quickly. Today, parties carrying the Liberal name continue to govern in Canada’s largest and third-largest provinces by population, Ontario and British Columbia, as well as the smallest, Prince Edward Island.

Okay, we’re done with the good news. Liberals in Ontario and B.C. could hardly have a more tenuous hold on power. Both have been down in the polls so long that it looks like up to them. B.C. Premier Christy Clark speculates now and then about jettisoning her party’s name, which is a bit confusing anyway because the B.C. Liberals are a centre-right coalition that little resembles the federal party.

Liberals do form the official opposition in Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. But given the steady drumbeat of salacious revelations from a commission of inquiry about the financing of Jean Charest’s former government in Quebec, it is unlikely the Liberals would do as well today as they did in September’s election.

Liberal parties are in third place in Alberta, Manitoba and the Yukon, the only territory where members of the legislature have party affiliations. In Saskatchewan in the last election the provincial Liberals didn’t even win one vote in 100.

In federal politics, the Liberals have lost seats and vote share in each of the last four elections. If they lose much more support they will start to owe votes to the other parties.

The federal Liberals’ problems began long before the current slump, Carleton University journalism prof Paul Adams argues in his new book Power Trap. “Arguably the Liberal party has been in decline since the 1950s,” he writes, “and there has been no ‘natural governing party’ since.” The federal Liberals have had no real presence in the Prairie West in a half-century. They have not won a majority of Quebec seats since 1980. Since 2004, when a united Conservative party put an end to the vote-splitting that produced a decade-long near-monopoly of Liberal seats in Ontario, the Liberals have lost another bucket of Ontario seats each time they went to bat.

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives reliably depict the Liberals as high-taxing statists who cannot imagine leaving a dollar in your pocket when they could spend it on daycare or a fancy census instead. Intriguingly, Adams argues nearly the opposite: that the Liberals’ long-standing “progressive impulses” were “quietly muted in a largely collaborative project” between Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin during the almost nine years Martin served in Chrétien’s cabinet.

The Liberals’ 1993 Red Book included promises to renegotiate NAFTA, to boost immigration levels and to create 50,000 daycare spaces. None was implemented. To Adams (whose book argues, probably in vain, for a Liberal-NDP merger), the result was that the Liberals blew their credibility as defenders of activist government.

“As you stare at the wreckage of what was arguably the most successful party in the history of the democratic world, there are various explanations for its utter demagnetization in 2011,” Adams writes. “Some of them were very long-term. But one of them, surely, must have been its wilful refusal to differentiate its policies from those of the Conservatives.”

Well, which is it? Are the Liberals incurable tax-and-spenders or are they a pale copy of the Conservatives? In the jurisdictions where Liberal disease is most advanced—Saskatchewan and Manitoba for many years, and increasingly now at the federal level—it’s both. The great danger for a centrist party is that it will forget how to argue persuasively for a centre.

None of these trends is necessarily irreversible. Canadian political history rarely moves in straight lines for long. But the decline of Liberal parties across most of the West, Liberal-branded crises in all of the three largest provinces and the federal party’s enduring slump all suggest a robust trend.

When they get in a tight spot, Liberals like to present themselves as the only moderate solution in a field of radicals. Justin Trudeau did it again when he announced his leadership candidacy. It is a spiel that reflects Liberals’ enduring wish for an imaginary fight that would be easy to win instead of the one they’re in. In fact, Liberals’ problems would vanish if the other parties would oblige them by behaving as ideologues. Conservative and social-democratic parties have sharply moderated their messages. There is no longer anything the NDP wants to nationalize, and the party likes to brag that it has delivered more balanced budgets where it has formed governments than Liberals have. Meanwhile, Stephen Harper repeatedly votes against his own backbenchers when they propose measures that would reopen the abortion debate. If Harper and Tom Mulcair were wild-eyed freaks, there would be acres of room for a centrist party. They aren’t, so there isn’t.

In fact, if the country’s assorted Liberal parties are in the mood for advice from the “department of easier said than done,” they should waste no more time seeking to present themselves as the middle ground between extremes. Instead they should find some extreme worth defending. What social end is so important that it’s worth taxing to achieve? What fights are worth fighting?

The decline of Liberal parties in Canada produces a kind of optical illusion. The centre isn’t disappearing, it is becoming crowded. Nothing about the Liberal name ensures the endurance of Liberal parties. Loyalty will not save them. Wit and heart will, or nothing will.

]]>http://www.macleans.ca/general/a-centrist-party-that-has-lost-its-centre/feed/42Dalton McGuinty’s resignation leaves much unresolved, including his futurehttp://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/gone-but-not-so-easily-forgotten/
http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/gone-but-not-so-easily-forgotten/#commentsThu, 18 Oct 2012 11:00:01 +0000http://www2.macleans.ca/?p=304277 For someone who worked hard to be liked, he departs under a cloud

If Halloween had been any closer, they might have thought they’d been pranked. The 53 Liberal MPPs had been summoned to a hastily assembled caucus meeting at a stuffy room in Toronto’s Queen’s Park legislature. It was odd for a Monday evening; odder still given the gaggle of reporters who’d been allowed through the doors. But nothing else about the gathering seemed out of the ordinary. Premier Dalton McGuinty arrived in shirtsleeves, as is his wont, and even the presence of his wife, Terri, strategically seated near the front, wasn’t enough to signal the weight of the news to come.

Then, the bombshell: leaning against the dais, McGuinty announced he was resigning from office as soon as the party could select a new leader, ending a nine-year run as Ontario premier and more than decade and a half at the helm of his party. And more controversially, he had prorogued the legislative session, thereby keeping his minority government alive until the handover was complete. At the back of the room, behind the TV cameras, Chris Morley, McGuinty’s former chief of staff, drank in the reaction. “In a place where there’s so much manufactured news,” he later told Maclean’s, “it was fun to watch something so important be broken in way that nobody knew.” Indeed, even those in the premier’s innermost circle had just a couple of days’ notice. On Saturday, McGuinty had dialed up a handful of close colleagues, including Morley—backers and advisers who had been with him since the beginning—to let them know his mind was made up. “When it’s time, it’s time. And I feel in my gut it’s time,” he told one political confidant who asked not to be named. “And I’m going to take some pleasure out of shocking everybody by doing it.” Morley describes the premier as resolute and firm: “He was a man who had reached his decision.”

That decision, however, remained a closely held secret up to the moment of revelation—a nod, say insiders, to a caucus that had remained loyal even after the party slipped into minority territory in last year’s election. Matt Maychak, who served as McGuinty’s director of communications from his days as Opposition leader until 2008, says his first inkling came from a reporter’s tweet about an “emergency” caucus meeting. The premier, he recalls, had been in an unusually reflective mood when they had played golf last spring on a public course. “He was talking about what he had accomplished in government, which is something he never does,” says Maychak. “And that’s when I knew he was at least pondering leaving.”

But it’s the manner of his departure—sudden, if not hasty—that has raised a lot of eyebrows. Was Canada’s longest-serving premier pushed out by his own party? Are there more embarrassing revelations to come about his government’s costly decision to cancel two unpopular power plants during the last election campaign? Or could he possibly be gearing up to take on Justin Trudeau for the leadership of the federal Liberals?

Whatever the case, as word of the resignation spread on Monday evening, current and former members of McGuinty’s staff converged on Queen’s Park, gathering in an ante room outside the premier’s Office. The group was relatively small—about 15 to 20 people—and the mood upbeat. After meeting with the media, McGuinty joined them for a single glass of scotch before heading home with Terri. “I think he drank about half of it,” says Morley, “which anyone who knows Dalton McGuinty would say was a wild night.” The party went on at a nearby pub until the wee hours of the morning. But the lights in the premier’s office were out by 9:30 p.m.

Some leaders go out with bangs, and some with whimpers, but only this improbable, slightly awkward finish would make a fitting coda for the rise and reign of Dalton McGuinty. He is a quiet, exceptionally studious man—aides grew accustomed to midnight phone calls alerting them to spelling errors deep in the appendices of his briefing books—who rarely displays emotion, let alone loses his temper. Those are useful qualifications in a lot of fields. Politics is not one of them.

His entry into the profession back in 1990 was more tragic than triumphant. After a long career as a professor of literature and entrepreneur, his father, Dalton Sr., had won election to Queen’s Park in 1987. But three years later, he suffered a fatal heart attack while shovelling snow off the back deck of his suburban Ottawa home. Following the funeral, a family meeting was convened to decide what to do with the open seat and it fell to Dalton Jr., the eldest boy among the 10 children, to pick up the torch. Other siblings like David—now a federal MP—had more of the old man’s partisan fire but their careers were too complicated, or kids too young. And so Dalton, an estate lawyer by trade, sought and won elected office at the age of 35.

In a Liberal caucus filled with heavy hitters from the recently defeated government of David Peterson, he drew little notice. And when he declared his intention to run for the leadership in 1996, few gave him a chance. But McGuinty had hatched a unique strategy—one that saw him put 60,000 km on the family’s Ford Windstar minivan as he criss-crossed the province trying to meet each and every one the 1,000 convention delegates. The pitch, reinforced by phone calls from his many brothers and sisters, was that he should be their second, or maybe even third choice. And when the leadership contest went to five ballots, those pledges of conditional support were enough to carry him past the heavily favoured Gerard Kennedy. Making his acceptance speech at 4:30 a.m. in Maple Leaf Gardens, McGuinty, hair Brylcreemed and perfectly parted, noted it was the latest he’d been up since he was a teenager.

The party may have been impressed with his strategic skills and vision, but voters were a harder sell. Yes, McGuinty seemed like a nice guy—married to his high school sweetheart, devoted father of four, a regular churchgoer—but if anything the arrow was too straight. (He rarely takes a drink, eschews tea or coffee, and has exercised daily since he was 18.) And on the hustings, the Liberal leader frequently seemed shy and uncomfortable. “He’s not wooden,” his wife Terri famously told a reporter. “He just has good posture.”

The nadir came in the 1999 election campaign when premier Mike Harris and his Tories launched a series of attack ads that painted McGuinty as an unproven and dangerous choice. “He’s just not up to the job,” was the simple and devastating tag line. The Conservatives won a second straight majority with 59 seats to the Liberals 35.

Warren Kinsella, a Liberal political strategist who worked closely with McGuinty says that’s when the transformation began. Staff changed, policy was beefed up, and the party became much more aggressive at fundraising. By the time the next election rolled around in 2003, the not-ready-for-prime-time player had morphed into Premier Dad—thanks in part to a visit to Chicago to study with David Axelrod, one of Barack Obama’s political gurus. “I think he became much more of a leader,” says Kinsella. “He learned that people want somebody to make the decisions, to take charge.”

Few had a better vantage point to watch the chrysalis than Howard Hampton, who became leader of the NDP the same year McGuinty won the Liberal helm, and waged three election campaigns against him before passing on the New Democrat banner in 2009. “Dalton grew in many ways,” says Hampton. “His public speaking ability grew. His capacity to deal with the media improved. And, as a politician of any longevity, you gain substance. You’re surrounded by issues every day, and you either become familiar and comfortable with them or you get out. There’s no doubt Dalton grew into all of those things.”

In 2003, voters rewarded that transformation with a commanding majority—72 seats to the combined Tory and NDP opposition total of 31. But the realities of power soon blunted the new premier’s optimism. Faced with a budget deficit that had ballooned to more than $5 billion by the time he took office, he quickly went back on his pledge not to raise taxes, unveiling a health care levy. Other vows, like a promise to shut down all of the province’s coal-fired power plants during his mandate, became moving targets, with closure dates pushed back with each passing year. Still he persevered, stringing together another majority win in 2007 and a minority in 2011 to become Ontario’s most electorally successful Liberal since Sir Oliver Mowat, who left office 116 years ago.

To his supporters, McGuinty will go down as the author of courageous programs that have left behind a smarter, healthier province: full-day kindergarten; a Green Belt protecting land outside Toronto from development; shorter waiting lists for medical treatment.

Why, then, the sense that he’s leaving under a cloud? “Dalton McQuitty,” blared the tabloid Toronto Sun the morning after the premier’s resignation announcement. “The Ontario Liberal party does indeed need new leadership,” wrote Matt Gurney, the National Post’s acerbic columnist, “but only because of how badly the current leadership has made a hash of things.” To these critics, emerging speculation that McGuinty’s sudden departure is prelude to a run at the leadership of the federal Liberal party is at best risible.

Heading up their list of complaints: a fiscal record that has seen Ontario go from being the country’s economic engine to a have-not province reliant on federal transfers, with a budget deficit almost as large as that of California. There were mitigating factors, most notably the recession that gripped the U.S., the province’s primary trading partner, and a Canadian dollar that has been on the rise since he took office. And McGuinty has made efforts to balance the books—pushing through a series of tax cuts that took Ontario’s corporate taxes from some of the highest in the world to some of the most competitive, as well as tax changes. “They did sell the HST to Ontarians,” adds Glen Hodgson, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada. “They went from a majority to a minority, but they’re one of the few governments that got re-elected having put in place what was clearly an unpopular tax.”

But on the other side of the ledger lies McGuinty’s inability to rein in spending increases that have expanded virtually every sector of government. Used to the good times, the Liberals never really adjusted when the economy took a nosedive in 2008.

“This is a government that has not been very effective at saying no,” says Queen’s University political scientist Cathy Brock. “Dalton McGuinty is the type of premier who wants to please people. He doesn’t want disharmony, so he finds it easier to expand than to contract programs.”

From 2006, when the government posted a modest surplus of $300 million, to the $15 billion deficit the province faces today, Liberal budgets have increased an average of seven per cent a year. The public sector grew by 200,000 workers, teachers saw generous wage increases, while health care spending alone has risen by eight per cent a year. And those unions responded in kind, donating generously to the Liberal’s election war chests.

McGuinty definitely had a plan to deal with things like public education, but it wasn’t so clear he had a handle on the bigger economic picture. By 2008, the premier, who once campaigned to scrap the system of federal equalization payments—arguing that the federal government used Ontario as a cash machine to siphon $23 billion from provincial coffers — found himself on the receiving end of $347 million in federal transfers. And his reaction to the economic crisis that decimated the province’s manufacturing sector was stuttering at best. His answer to shuttered factories and rising unemployment was a controversial program to transition Ontario into a green economy with a program that quickly came under fire for hefty subsidies to renewable energy projects and a sole-sourced $7-billion contract with Korea’s Samsung to build wind turbines. “It was never a comprehensive vision. They never really put all the sectors together,” says an economist who worked closely with the government. “[If they did] we might have stood in 2012 with a clearer idea of what needs to be done to succeed.”

And in the end, it was his government’s insistence on pushing large-scale green energy projects into rural communities—while cancelling them in urban Mississauga—that cost him his majority government. Seven of the seats the Liberals lost in last year’s election came in ridings where residents were opposed to local green-energy projects, including the seat held by environment minister John Wilkinson.

Then this summer, facing a minority parliament and running out of options to rein in spending, McGuinty swapped the goodwill he had built up with the public sector, through years of generous contract negotiations, for a hard-line stance on unions. He subtly accused teachers of being greedy by banking sick days for years, money he said the province needed to pay for its new all-day kindergarten program. “We have to convey to our partners in no uncertain terms that we have no new money,” he said in August.

Yet McGuinty’s legacy as premier is inextricably tied up in that habit of rarely shying away from tough choices, argues Gerry Butts, his former principal secretary. “I remember him telling us a story about an old Irish relative of his who, when he was a boy and afraid to climb a wall, used to throw his cap over it first because he knew he couldn’t come home without it. And that’s what Dalton did on several occasions on big issues over his career—he’s always gone to get the hat.”

All of which leaves those questions about McGuinty’s departure unanswered. By proroguing the legislature, opponents note, the premier derailed the work of a finance committee about to sift through long-awaited documents on the gas plant deals. And it was increasingly clear that he chafed under the constraints of minority power. Friends and insiders say he was irked when the Progressive Conservatives refused to support his proposal to freeze public sector wages as a way to restore the province to fiscal health. “I think he found the psychological transition difficult,” adds Henry Jacek, a McMaster University political scientist. “I think he got used to running a government with a majority.”

That doesn’t bode well for an increasingly vocal circle who would draft McGuinty into the federal Liberal leadership contest. National elections, after all, have been just as prone recently as provincial ones to minority outcomes.

Yet faith among Liberals in the unlikely premier with the awkward manner apparently hasn’t waned. “In the last day, a number of folks have made it clear they’d support his candidacy [for the federal leadership], whether from an organizational or funding perspective,” says Morley, one among a handful of confidants likely to manage a McGuinty campaign. “I think he’d bring a lot to the race.” Hard to believe, perhaps, for many Ontarians. But surely not outside the realm of possibility for a politician who has made a career of confounding expectations.

The Canadian Federation of Students (Ontario) has accused the Liberal government of “broken promises” and misleading voters about who would be eligible for a substantial new tuition credit.

But Glen Murray, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities, tells On Campus that the CFS-O are “the only people who seem confused.”

The Liberals, who were re-elected to a minority government on Oct. 6, campaigned on a new tuition grant amounting to $1,600 per year for university students and $730 for college students.

Today, the CFS-O issued a statement saying the Liberals misled students because the grant only applies to full-time undergraduates and college students in first-entry programs who are from families that make under $160,000 per year.

According to CFS-O’s statistics, there are 920,000 students in Ontario when everyone, including part-time students, graduate students and those in professional programs are added in. But only about one-third of those—310,000—will get the new tuition cheques or credits this year.

That’s hardly the “30 per cent across-the-board cut,” indicted in the Liberal’s platform, they say.

Not only did the details not reach voters, argues the CFS-O, but that’s less fair than the 13 per cent tuition cut for everyone that the nearly $500-million program could have purchased.

Families may indeed have been confused if all they read was the Liberal platform. It said this about the grants: “We’re going to support all middle-class Ontario families with a 30 per cent across-the-board post-secondary undergraduate tuition grant. That means—every year—the families of five out of six students will save $1600 per student in university and $730 per student in college.”

The document made it clear they were talking about undergraduates and families who make less than $160,000, but part-timers, mature students and those studying out-of-province had to go elsewhere to find out they were ineligible.

“In some cases, they explained the details,” says Nora Loreto, spokesperson for CFS-O. “But that message wasn’t getting through to the average person.” She knows that because parents have been calling her office frequently, trying to figure out why their children aren’t eligible. She says many Ontarians assumed that tuition was being reduced by 30 per cent for most students, because that’s the message they got from campaigning Liberals in newspaper articles and brochures.

Still, Minister Murray defended the alleged lack of clarity. “We did not include the application form in the platform, no,” he said. “But if you’d talked to the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance or the College Alliance, it was very clear.”

The details are also something he says Liberals discussed “over and over again” on the campaign trail. “Under $160,000? Check. High school in the last four years? Check. First-entry college or university? Check,” says Murray. “The only people that seem confused are the CFS,” he says.

Fall, it seems, is the official season for scare tactics—and I’m not talking about Halloween. I’m talking about sex, and a coming of age tradition that’s supposed to render it totally unsexy: sex education—or, as I remember it, a queasy 45 minutes of watching your teacher put a condom on a banana and advocate something called “heavy petting” as an alternative to “doing it.” Apparently, though, sex ed’s just not what it used to be, and lefty school boards across Canada are brainwashing kids as young as six to believe they can—according to Charles McVety, president of Canada Christian College—“change their gender.” McVety, a televangelist who says he has many “ex-gay friends” (friends who used to be gay, not, decidedly, the other way around) is behind stopcorruptingchildren.ca, a pet project of his Institute for Canadian Values, creator of the controversial advertisement pictured with this column.

The motive behind the ad, and what had Charles McVety’s moral shorts in a knot, was a controversial plan of the Ontario Liberal government to institute a more comprehensive sex education curriculum—one that included teaching Grade 3 students about homosexuality and Grade 7 students about anal and oral sex. The fact that the Liberals walked away from their plans in the face of ferocious opposition was apparently not enough to assuage McVety (who, buoyed by examples in a resource guide for the Toronto school board, maintains that children across Ontario are even now being required to cross-dress to show solidarity with various sexually “confused” communities).That McVety is right to the extent that such a plan would be a bad idea (the educational merits of cross dressing are beyond me) is irrelevant because he’s wrong about virtually everything else. And he’s not alone.

There are factions working to oust sexual diversity platforms (the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, to name one) from sex ed curricula across the country. And the most egregious thing about their scarily popular ideology isn’t that it’s criminally transphobic; it’s criminally dumb. The doe-eyed little girl in the ad, for example, won’t denounce her biological sex because she learns somebody else once did. Gender dysphoria and homosexuality aren’t contagious; they’re God-given. (If they weren’t—if gay people could “pray the gay away”—they would probably do so somewhere in that “wonderful” time between puberty and college—that, at least, is what I would have done.)

We aren’t, that is, talking about a choice here—which is precisely what McVety and the Institute for Canadian Values are talking about. Which does have some novel implications: it took me about five minutes of conversation with McVety to realize that his view on sexual identity was more fluid and radical than any view held by his liberal adversaries. “[Such a curriculum] can definitely change their understanding of their gender identity,” McVety told me. “The fact is, you have many people who one day identify themselves as a man and then identify themselves as female and then later change to two-spirited.” And educational instruction, he argues, is a legitimate catalyst for this kind of chameleon behaviour. So school is to sexual orientation what advertising is to your choice of toilet-paper brand. McVety and his allies are like an unfunny version of Larry David, who wrote in the New York Times that he refused to see the movie Brokeback Mountain because he was afraid it would turn him into a homosexual (not that there was anything wrong with that).

One of the most deceptive corollaries attached to the myth of “sexual choice” is the idea that your orientation denotes a lifestyle. In college I drank heavily and ate entire wheels of cheese in one sitting. Some would call this a “high risk” lifestyle. Now I work in an office and eat at my desk; a lifestyle you might call “sedentary.” But I do not, nor have I ever lived, a gay lifestyle. Why? Because sexual orientation isn’t a lifestyle: it’s a life sentence.

But pundits like McVety and the people who back them continue to hammer at the idea of choice, which is why their rhetoric is so poisonous. These people are intellectually dishonest to the detriment of the children they claim to protect. McVety’s assumption that kids are too young to learn about homosexuality, let alone to accept homosexuals, certainly would have failed Jamey Rodemeyer, the 14-year-old Buffalo, N.Y., teen whose suicide was preceded by years of gay bashing long before he began high school.

The truth is that the Institute for Canadian Values’ objection isn’t to the age-appropriateness of the education; it’s to the message that being gay or trans is not morally inferior to being straight. And they have an ideological ally in the National Post’s resident killjoy, right-wing columnist Barbara Kay, who argues that talking to young kids about transsexuality will result in the “betrayal of children’s right to biological confidence.” Kay, like McVety, apparently thinks that teaching children to accept homosexuals is impossible without teaching them about homosexual sex. But she’s wrong. The most effective piece of “sex” education I’ve ever witnessed was my cousin explaining to her three-year-old son over dinner that I was in a same-sex relationship. “Sam,” she said, pointing at me and my girlfriend, “they’re in love. Do you know what that means?” Sam looked up from his colouring book, said, “Yeah, yeah, two moms,” and immediately went back to ignoring us. He has yet to try on his mother’s dresses.

]]>Ontario’s governing Liberals say that if they’re re-elected on Oct. 6, they would double the length of teacher’s college programs from one to two years.

“The new two-year program would mean that student teachers would spend more time in the classroom,” the Liberals wrote a press release. “Ontario’s one-year teacher education program is one of the shortest in Canada. Other places in the world where students rank high in standardized tests — such as Japan, Singapore and Finland — have multi-year programs.” They point out that Ontario teachers graduate with only 40 days experience.